Tag: hearing

Listen (Jeremiah 42:18-22)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘As my anger and wrath have been poured out on those who lived in Jerusalem, so will my wrath be poured out on you when you go to Egypt. You will be a curse and an object of horror, a curse and an object of reproach; you will never see this place again.’

“Remnant of Judah, the Lord has told you, ‘Do not go to Egypt.’ Be sure of this: I warn you today that you made a fatal mistake when you sent me to the Lord your God and said, ‘Pray to the Lord our God for us; tell us everything he says and we will do it.’ I have told you today, but you still have not obeyed the Lord your God in all he sent me to tell you. So now, be sure of this: You will die by the sword, famine and plague in the place where you want to go to settle.” (New International Version)

We all find ourselves in trouble at one time or another. The real issue is whether we’re in trouble for no fault of our own, or if we’re in dire straits because of our own stubbornness and stupidity.

God tends to take a lot of flack from us humans, whenever we are in the middle of trouble. Yet, much of the time, it’s our own dang fault for not listening to God in the first place.

Whenever other people are hard-hearted and unjust, we’re ready for some divine judgment to happen. But when it’s me, all I want is some mercy and grace, some understanding and acknowledgment of my predicament. We have got to realize that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Talk can be cheap. The ancient people of Judah verbally affirmed their dedication to doing what God would tell them to do. And then, like some sort of spiritual dementia, they seemed to forget everything they said, and turned around to disobey all they heard from God.

It all came down to an issue of trust. The people looked to Egypt for their deliverance from the Babylonian army, instead of turning their faces toward God and doing exactly what the Lord wanted.

So, the Lord, an ever-present power much like the force of gravity, let the people know that if they’re going to ignore that force, they’ll end up falling and breaking their bodies.

People make mistakes. They do stupid things. And they sin against God and others. It happens. But how we respond to it all is highly important. If we don’t learn from our missteps, and choose to keep living without adjusting our lives to God’s abiding presence in the world, we can expect trouble.

A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions.
    The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences. (Proverbs 27:12, NLT)

The ancient people of Judah had already suffered one Babylonian invasion. Now they were faced with yet another. The people wanted to flee. But their looking to Egypt was not a wise avoidance; it was an attempt to stick their heads in the sand, to put their fingers in their ears and shut tight their eyes. Instead, they needed to stay put and face the music.

The prophet Jeremiah reminded the people that, in this situation, there was a dual danger: It’s bad to go to Egypt, so don’t do it; and it’s really bad to disobey God, so listen and do what the Lord says.

Ignorance puts everyone in jeopardy. To follow through with plans that are diametrically opposed to what God has specifically said not to do, puts the entire community in the grip of a death sentence. After all, the Lord already knows what’s up and what’s going to happen if we foolishly amble into a hornet’s nest of trouble on top of trouble.

Whenever people are cursed, it’s typically because they refuse to listen; they don’t heed the warnings and end up doing something out of their anxiety, instead of acting with wisdom.

Unnecessary suffering comes from disobedience. Disobedience is a result of ignorance. And ignorance comes from purposefully not listening to sage advice, divine commands, and the wisdom of the ages.

It all comes down to giving focused attention so that we might hear and heed the voice of God. This is why the spiritual practices of solitude, silence, stillness, and contemplative and centering prayers are so very important. It puts us in a position to listen with open ears and receptive hearts.

The following are four guidelines of centering prayer, offered by one of the masters of this form, Father Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God: An Introduction to Centering Prayer:

  1. Choose a sacred word as the symbol of your intention to consent to God’s presence and action within.
  2. Sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, settle briefly, and silently introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within.
  3. When engaged with your thoughts, body sensations, feelings, images, and reflections, return ever-so-gently to the sacred word.
  4. At the end of the prayer period, remain in silence with eyes closed for a couple of minutes.

The best way to avoid unnecessary trouble, heed biblical warnings, and listen to the divine is by aspiring and dedicating oneself to a genuine spiritual life.

St. John of the Cross, a spiritual giant of a prayerful and listening life, wrote in the sixteenth century, “God spoke one word from all eternity and he spoke it in silence, and it is in silence that we hear it.”

The reason God is so often silent, is that silence is God’s first language; all other verbal languages are but poor translations. Centering ourselves in prayer is a needed preparation for the contemplation that enables us to hear and listen well to the language of God.

Perhaps if the people in Jeremiah’s day did so, they would not have found themselves in such a dire predicament.

Almighty and everlasting God, make me ready, when your voice is truly heard, so that I may respond with glad obedience glad and steady devotion, silent and still to follow every word. Speak, Lord, for I am listening. Amen.

Listen and See (Isaiah 42:14-21)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

For a long time, I, the Lord,
    have held my temper;
now I will cry out and groan
    like a woman giving birth.
I will destroy the mountains
    and what grows on them;
I will dry up rivers and ponds.

I will lead the blind on roads
    they have never known;
I will guide them on paths
    they have never traveled.
Their road is dark and rough,
    but I will give light
to keep them from stumbling.
    This is my solemn promise.

Everyone who worships idols
as though they were gods
    will be terribly ashamed.

You people are deaf and blind,
but the Lord commands you
    to listen and to see.
No one is as blind or deaf
as his messenger,
    his chosen servant,
who sees and hears so much,
    but pays no attention.

The Lord always does right,
and so he wanted his Law
    to be greatly praised. (Contemporary English Version)

The Christian season of Lent serves to remind us that we must cultivate awareness by opening our eyes and unstopping our ears. Spiritual blindness and deafness are the result of failing to pay attention, ignoring the moral vision of God, and not listening to God’s voice.

It’s not unusual for people to complain about God being silent and ignoring them. But do we ever consider how the Lord feels about us living our lives as functional atheists? There may be expressions of belief, yet God doesn’t factor into the daily life of many. And the Lord is not okay with this.

At least we have assurances throughout Holy Scripture that the Lord is attentive to us, even when silent or seemingly not there. However, when it comes to us, our silence and lack of being present to the Lord is outright spiritual blindness and deafness on our part.

Today’s Old Testament lesson almost seems as if Yahweh is like the person trying to get your attention in a crowded place – jumping up and down, waving his arms, yelling our name – doing whatever it takes for us to see and hear, listen and look up. Yet, alas, we don’t.

Maybe we need to remember what God’s divine eyes and ears have already seen and heard. The Lord heard the awful groanings of the Israelites in Egypt under their harsh slavery. And God took notice of them and saw what was happening. (Exodus 2:24-25)

Perhaps we must recall all the times the Lord heard the cries of the people and sent a deliverer (Judges 2:16-19); and looked from heaven, saw those in bondage, and freed them. (Psalm 102:18-20)

If we put our fingers in our ears, and cover our eyes for too long, our hearts will become hard, and we shall be unable to turn from unhealthy ways of living. We’ll become so obtuse and clueless that we cannot repent and be healed.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” He said, “Go and tell this people:

“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
    be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
Make the heart of this people calloused;
    make their ears dull
    and close their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.” (Isaiah 6:8-10, NIV)

This might seem rather hard. And yet, none of us can truly know comfort and consolation apart from facing the hard truth in front of us and the hard heart inside us. Everyone wants happiness without pain. However, we cannot have a rainbow without a storm, and a resurrection without a cross.

We can have a different experience of God. It’s not too late. The message of Lent is that we can prepare ourselves for the Lord’s deliverance – and it is likely to come in the form of great sorrow and great joy of which we could not have anticipated.

The wisdom I proclaim is God’s secret wisdom, which is hidden from human beings, but which he had already chosen for our glory even before the world was made. None of the rulers of this world knew this wisdom. If they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as the scripture says,

“What no one ever saw or heard,
    what no one ever thought could happen,
    is the very thing God prepared for those who love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:7-9, GNT)

We humans struggle with the hard things of life. Yet, what we don’t always see or hear is how those adversities are shaping and forming us as a people.

For how would we ever know the Lord as our:

  • Deliverer unless we were in bondage?
  • Comforter unless we were in trouble?
  • Helper unless we were weak?
  • Healer unless we were broken?
  • Provider unless we were poor?
  • Protector unless we were in danger?
  • Warrior unless we were under attack?
  • Rock unless we were being tossed about?

Every day is a fresh opportunity to experience the presence, power, provision, and protection of a God who sees and hears us. Believers are to honor and respect the Lord by listening to God’s voice and obeying God’s words.

So, let us use this season to offer prayers of repentance and faith:

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways,
and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Listen to the Prophets (Jeremiah 25:1-14)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
St. Nicholas Church fresco of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel by Leopold Bruckner, Prešov, Slovakia

This is the Message given to Jeremiah for all the people of Judah. It came in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah. It was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.

Jeremiah the prophet delivered the Message to all the people of Judah and citizens of Jerusalem:

From the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah right up to the present day—twenty-three years it’s been!—God’s Word has come to me, and from early each morning to late every night I’ve passed it on to you. And you haven’t listened to a word of it!

Not only that but God also sent a steady stream of prophets to you who were just as persistent as me, and you never listened. They told you, “Turn back—right now, each one of you!—from your evil way of life and bad behavior and live in the land God gave you and your ancestors, the land he intended to give you forever. Don’t follow the god-fads of the day, taking up and worshiping these no-gods. Don’t make me angry with your god-businesses, making and selling gods—a dangerous business!

“You refused to listen to any of this, and now I am really angry. These god-making businesses of yours are your doom.”

The verdict of God-of-the-Angel-Armies on all this: “Because you have refused to listen to what I’ve said, I’m stepping in. I’m sending for the armies out of the north headed by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, my servant in this, and I’m setting them on this land and people and even the surrounding countries. I’m devoting the whole works to total destruction—a horror to top all the horrors in history. And I’ll banish every sound of joy—singing, laughter, marriage festivities, genial workmen, candlelit suppers. The whole landscape will be one vast wasteland. These countries will be in subjection to the king of Babylon for seventy years.

“Once the seventy years is up, I’ll punish the king of Babylon and the whole nation of Babylon for their sin. Then they’ll be the wasteland. Everything that I said I’d do to that country, I’ll do—everything that’s written in this book, everything Jeremiah preached against all the godless nations. Many nations and great kings will make slaves of the Babylonians, paying them back for everything they’ve done to others. They won’t get by with anything.” God’s Decree. (The Message)

An ancient rabbi once said that we have two ears and one mouth so that we will listen twice as much as we talk. 

Listening with curious and focused attention is a forgotten skill and a lost art in Western society. 

Slick marketing, political punditry, and over-the-top speech all scream into the culture because there is such a dearth of listening. It seems many people are more concerned to make their opinions known than do any kind of deep listening to another.

No one seems to want to put in the work of discovering another’s true thoughts, feelings, and needs. Instead, we’d rather rant, play armchair quarterback, and make uninformed comments on things we don’t understand.

It’s really downright sad and tragic that we fail to listen to each other. And it is especially terrible when we do not listen to God. 

The Old Testament prophets exist because of a failure to listen. At the time of Jeremiah, not only did the people not hear; they refused to listen. They put their fingers in their ears and babbled “la-la-la-la-la.” So, it was only fitting that the Lord sent the people to Babylon.

This was not merely the inability to listen because they were overworked, too tired, or “hangry.” The problem was much deeper than that. For years, God kept up a steady stream of words, telling the people exactly what was expected. But they didn’t listen, on purpose. Like a parent speaking to an angsty teenager, it all went in one ear and out the other with nothing getting done.

God passionately desired the people to amend their evil ways. But they didn’t want to hear it. 

So, after years, even centuries of unfaithfulness, unrighteousness, and injustice, God’s patience came to its limit. Tragedy happened. The Babylonian Exile became a terrible and harsh reality.

If there is no deep listening to God and God’s Word to us, there will be deep repercussions. 

Listen, my friends: None of us can do the will of God if we don’t know what God wants. It takes listening. And listening takes focused attention. And focused attention requires a posture of humility. And humility requires being emptied of all pride and hubris. 

Apart from genuine listening with the intent to understand and alter actions accordingly, there will be no peace, no love, no grace. The space of inattention quickly fills with lazy ears, emotional heaviness, spiritual sickness, xenophobic suspicion, anxious fear, dark thoughts, angry rants, and a retreat into selfish caring for oneself. 

The beginning of wisdom and human flourishing starts with listening well. Paying attention through deep listening brings humility of heart, purification of pride, and love of God and neighbor.

Truly hearing the words of God leads to self-awareness, cries for God’s mercy, a knowledge of humanity, the study of Holy Scripture, and a familiarity with the Church’s long tradition of sound teaching.

Therefore, silence is vital for everyone. Prayer needs to be more about sitting still in solitude and silence in order to listen and much less about talking at God.

But if we insist on making more noise than a couple of skeletons dancing on a tin roof, we will eventually be those skeletons – without any substance and only good for the grave.

So, read the prophets. Listen to them. Pay attention to their message. And heed their warnings and exhortations. Your ears will be glad you did.

Holy Father and God of all, your speech goes out into all the earth. Your Word is there for us to hear if we will only but listen. 

Lord Jesus, let your words and your teachings penetrate so deeply into my soul that your loving ways come out of me in all I say and do.

Blessed Holy Spirit, help me to so listen to your inner voice that encouragement and forgiveness pours forth from the wellspring of a heart which is baptized in God’s Word. Amen.

Romans 2:12-16 – Doing, Not Just Hearing, Makes the Difference

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Exploring Church Ministry Blog, Year CLeave a comment

If you sin without knowing what you’re doing, God takes that into account. But if you sin knowing full well what you’re doing, that’s a different story entirely. Merely hearing God’s law is a waste of your time if you don’t do what he commands. Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God.

When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. Their response to God’s yes and no will become public knowledge on the day God makes his final decision about every man and woman. The Message from God that I proclaim through Jesus Christ considers all these differences. (The Message)

Every single person on planet earth has been created by a good Creator in the image and likeness of God, without exception.

Because we are all stamped with the Lord’s divine image deep within us, there is a universally inherent sense of justice, rightness, fairness, integrity, morality, and love. Particulars of ethics may differ from culture to culture, yet all persons and societies have a broadly similar innate understanding of right and wrong.

Within the ancient Roman Church were a mix of Jews (the historical people of God who were given the law and the covenant through Moses) and Gentiles (non-Jewish persons). The Apostle Paul wrote his lengthy and probing letter to them because the two groups of Jew and Gentile were at odds with one another.

The Gentile Christians could not understand the Jewish Christian fondness and insistence on ancient rules and particular commands, and so, they looked down on their brothers and sisters in the faith as being hopelessly locked into outdated traditions and practices.

Conversely, the Jewish Christians could not understand the Gentile Christian affinity for a freedom that seemed to not care about the religious importance of food and eating, seasons and holy days, and outward signs of Christianity, and so, they tended to look down on their brothers and sisters in the faith as ignorant, immature, and in need of ritual practices.

We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.

Romans 3:22, NLT

The Church back then was almost like putting a group of people with O.C.D. (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) with a group of people with A.D.D. (Attention-Deficit Disorder). At the least, it’s going to very interesting to watch them try to live and worship together; at the worst, it’s going to spark an all-out battle for supremacy.

Paul was intervening somewhere in the middle between the interesting situation and the pitched battles so that the Church would not turn into total war. The last thing he wanted was two churches: one Jewish and one Gentile. No, there is one church, just as there is one God. Paul was determined that these knuckleheads are going to have to learn to get along.

Since Paul himself was a Jewish Christian, he tended to get pretty testy with his fellow Jews. Although Paul often went back-and-forth throughout his letter to the Romans, addressing Jews, then Gentiles, he most often had more to say to the Jewish brothers and sisters.

And that is what’s happening in today’s New Testament lesson. The Apostle Paul is directing his words chiefly toward the Jewish believers. He is lifting the Gentile believers and placing them on the same level as the Jews. Although the Gentiles weren’t the ones who received the law, they’ve always had that law deep inside them.

God is not only the God of the Jews. He is also the God of those who are not Jews. There is only one God. He will make Jews right with him by their faith, and he will also make non-Jews right with him through their faith.

Romans 3:29-30, ERV

Not only ought the Gentile Christians to be respected because of their inherent sense of God’s law, but this also makes them accountable for their own words and actions. In other words, there’s no excuse for any sinful talk or behavior.

What’s more, the real issue isn’t whether one group has the law, or not. The rub is whether one actually obeys and does the will of God. It doesn’t matter whether one hears the law read aloud in a Jewish synagogue or whether one hears the law spoken in the individual conscience. All are responsible for acting on that voice and engaging in deeds of justice, peace, and love. All must connect with the stamped image of God within us.

I’m not sure what is worse: committing overt sins or observing the sin and doing nothing about it. Indifference is at the core of most sin – both for the perpetrator and the passive spectator seeing it. Each one is living against both their conscience and by what they’ve heard and been taught.

The Word of God has not been truly received until it is put into practice. This is a consistent theme in the New Testament: 

Jesus said, “The people who are really blessed are the ones who hear and obey God’s message!”

Luke 11:28, CEV

Obey God’s message! Don’t fool yourselves by just listening to it. If you hear the message and don’t obey it, you are like people who stare at themselves in a mirrorand forget what they look like as soon as they leave. But you must never stop looking at the perfect law that sets you free. God will bless you in everything you do, if you listen and obey, and don’t just hear and forget. (James 1:22-25, CEV)

Listening to the Word without obedience is just that – it is mere hearing.

Profession of faith in Jesus means nothing without a practice of that faith.

Learning the Bible is useless without living it.

Acceptance of the Word is nothing more than a mental exercise without action to back it up.

Profession, knowledge, and acceptance alone does not satisfy God’s plan for our lives. 

The danger is that we have the potential to deceive ourselves into thinking we are okay just because we know the right things and believe the right things. Christianity is a vital love relationship with Jesus, and, so, is not merely a matter of hearing and affirming orthodox truth; it also involves orthopraxy, that is, having right practice, the doing of truth.

Whenever the Gentile Christians in Rome refused to love the Jewish Christians, they were not hearing God and doing his will.

Whenever the Jewish Christians listened to law and gospel, but then had no intention of changing to accommodate the Gentile Christians, they were being disobedient.

And whenever we hear about how God forgives us in Jesus’ name, but then we insist on not forgiving another person, we are not being doers of the Word.

So, let’s take a lesson from the ancient Roman Church: Live by faith. Be attentive to all persons in the Body of Christ. Include them and care for them. Pay attention to God’s Word. Include it and engraft into your life. Because care of the Body and care of the Word go hand-in-hand together.

May the God who created a world of diversity and vibrancy,
Go with us as we embrace life in all its fullness.

May the Son who teaches us to care for stranger and foreigners,
Go with us as we try to be good neighbors in our communities.

May the Spirit who breaks down our barriers and celebrates community,
Go with us as we find the courage to create a place of welcome for all. Amen.