My boss was very active. He handed me lots of things to work on, lots of projects to research. And I enjoyed it. It was stretching. It was fun.

We were sitting in his office one afternoon, talking. I already had a long list of next steps in front of me. I was ready to walk next door to my office to get busy on the list. There were deadlines. My boss himself had set some of the deadlines.

And we were just talking. Not about the projects, not about the todo list. We were just spending time together talking.

I started to get twitchy. Because we were talking, the work was not getting done. Opportunities were being missed. Instead we were just sitting here, talking.

Right now I have no idea what we were talking about. I just remember the frustration.

And then I started to smile inside.  I realized that the lists came from the person I was talking with. He knew the deadlines. He knew the projects. He knew how much there was to get done. But he also knew that he wanted to talk with me, that our conversations mattered, that our relationship mattered.

Although some bosses may waste your time and then punish you for not getting your work done, this one didn’t. And neither does God.

Jesus invited the twelve to follow. At least some of the time they they were just sitting, talking. We don’t have transcripts of those times because the primary purpose was not note-taking, it was being together, it was relationship.

I have a funny feeling that one reason we have such a hard time with the idea of listening in prayer is that we think we have to be working on some list. Maybe we could just live, listening.