30 Days of Hearing

Day 12: Three-Dog Day

I grew up listening to the band, Three Dog Night. Loved their music. Loved to dance to their music! Any fans out there? Well, yesterday, I experienced a “three-dog day”—music that was not so pleasant nor inspiring to dance to.

My daughter Bri is on spring break from IU and home for a few days, along with her adorable pup, Rufio. Meanwhile, Brandt and Laura were in Chicago and left their dog, Amos, in our keep. So, Bongo, our canine creature makes for a “three dog day.”

As you can imagine, all this dog fur and dog paws makes it tough to keep the house clean. So, yesterday (and because we are having houseguests tonight:), I decided to mop the floor. Consequently, Bri had the odious job of taking the three dogs upstairs to my bedroom.

You would have thought they were being tortured! Amos, with his forlorn and desperate moan, began to howl. Bongo and Rufio joined in a chorus of yips, punctuated by moments of irritating playful yelps. Even from my vantage point downstairs, mopping the floor, I was about to lose my mind.

Their continuous and unrelenting barks were so distracting, I felt miserable that I couldn’t respond by letting them out. Their commotion pierced my hearing and became fodder for my 30 Days of Hearing and my spiritual journey. As I reflect, I think of the passage in Exodus 2 where God heard the desperate cries of the Israelites, suffering under Egyptian rule, and those cries got to him. He responded by sending Moses to lead them out of Egypt and back to the land that he promised them.

The mournful, desperate cries of the oppressed should wear on us. If we don’t hear, don’t notice, don’t attend to them, we are deaf to the world of which God tunes in. Whose pitiful calls for help are you responding to? Who of the oppressed and marginalized, those suffering injustice, do you notice and move toward to free? Pay attention today to the sounds of the living around you who feel locked up in a room somewhere, longing to be set free.