I talked and He listened

I talked and He listened.

The green pastures let me rest, beside a quiet stream. The earth stretched His glorious hands soaking me in His warmth that asked nothing from me, offering a kind of peace I didn’t know how to accept. Even the lamb laid still, unafraid, as if it trusted something I could not yet see.

It was all there laid out in front of me, I just didn‘t lay down.

I just kept talking. Words leaked out of my mouth like a tap that refuses to turn off, restless, uncontained, urgent for no reason other than I did not know how to be quiet. All the worries and chaos that I built with my own two hands pressed and squeezed against my chest until every word had nowhere else to go, spilling out into a stillness that never asked for them.

There was a table set before me, everything that I needed, nothing I had to earn. It wasn’t loud and grand, but it was there— and it was enough. Bread was still warm, water untouched. Everything was laid out like it had been waiting for longer than I had.

I felt the hunger, the quiet ache of it.
I knew the thirst.

But instead of reaching out, I kept speaking,words could fill what was already waiting to be satisfied.

It didn’t.

The bread stayed warm.
The water stayed still.
Nothing was taken away from me, I just never took it.

Maybe it was never the fact that I didn’t know, I just never stopped long enough to find out.
The quiet had been there the whole time, patient, unhurried, waiting for me to reach it. It was never something I could chase or earn, but something I had to be still for.

The birds drift through the air without hesitation. They don’t plant or harvest or stress about what they will eat tomorrow as He will always prepare a table for them.
The lilies stand where they are, dressed in quiet beauty, asking nothing more of the world than to simply be.
The rest had always been there. The peace, the answer, the voice. I kept speaking over it.
Everything else seemed to understand it.
The lamb did.
The water did.
I was the only one who couldn’t recognise what had been calling me all along.
I talked and He listened, but I was the one who never learnt how to listen back.

Writer – Jocosa Lin
Editor – Jessie Lin
Artist – Charlotte Zhao

–May 2026–