Pause A Moment ... and Listen

American Fork, Utah, is the home of the Utah State Development Center. Years ago it was known as the American Fork Training School, a place where people who are developmentally disabled can receive training in various skills, find recreational opportunities, and receive a variety of needed treatments and therapies.

While at BYU in 1984-5, one of my instructors told the following story. Some years earlier, there was in American Fork a young boy who on a certain day was helping his father with the chores on the property behind their home. There was a lot to do that day—feeding animals, general clean-up, repairing this and fixing that. But in the middle of it all there came a moment when the boy stopped whatever it was he was doing. He cocked his head the way you do when you're straining to hear something. His father kept on working. Then suddenly, without telling his father, the boy ran off through the fields, in the direction of the Training School.

Soon he found himself walking down a country road, anxiously looking for whatever it was that had gotten his attention. Then he spied him. A little boy had tried to climb through a barbed wire fence and had gotten all tangled up. The more the little guy tried to get free, the worse his situation got as the pointed barbs ripped his clothes and cut into his flesh. He was crying and scared and bleeding.

The boy who found him realized that he was helpless to free the little fellow without proper tools to cut the wire, so he took off running for home and to tell his father. The two of them soon returned, cut the little boy free and took him to a nearby hospital to have his injuries treated. While they were waiting, the medical staff determined the identity of the boy and found that he had wandered away from the Training School. A phone call was made to the school, and soon a member of the school's staff arrived.

Grateful for the intervention of the boy and his father, the staff member approached them and asked the boy, "How in the world did you find him?"

"I heard his cries for help," came the reply.

"But that's impossible," said the man. "This boy is dumb—he cannot speak."

As you reflect on this story, perhaps you'll find yourself wondering why the father didn't hear the cries for help. It wasn't because he was a bad man. I think it was probably because he was so intent on getting the chores done that his busy-ness simply got in the way of more important promptings.

Life is a lot like that, you know. We're surrounded by a lot of noise—much of it of our own choosing. Perhaps this story can serve as a reminder that there is One who is trying to communicate with us through a still, small voice—through quiet feelings—but if we're not paying attention, or, like the father in this story, if we're too busy with the "more important" things in our lives, we'll miss out on them altogether—even missing precious opportunities to rescue people from the things that have entangled them.