Listen

Mark 4:2-3 And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: "Listen!”

Let me get right to the point of this idea. We have a problem with listening, well, at least I do. My problem is multi-fold. First off, I don’t always want to hear what is being said. It may be that I don’t like the application of instruction I am receiving, or I think I know better than the one speaking, or perhaps I just don’t care. Are you like that as well?

Perhaps you’re the type of listener that lets it go in one ear and out the other. I am at times being polite enough to stand there, but my mind is already ahead to what I am going to say next so that the force of the words being spoken to me lose their effect. On the other hand, you might find yourself here--a listener who is only there so that he can get something, some dirt on the other person to use against him/her at some future time. You see the problem is not in the hearing; it is in the listening.

Hearing is easy. There is a lot of noise in our world today; just flip through the channels of the television and you will hear all kinds of stuff from ultra-conservatives to screaming liberals. Each one of them is calling out for your attention. It is easy to hear them and sometimes to be blinded by their words and emotion, but have you stopped to listen to what they are actually saying?

Hearing is the ability to receive words into our mind; listening is the ability to make sense of the words we hear. This may surprise you: NOT every word you hear happens to be good. The ability to listen enables us to decipher between words that are profitable and words that need to be discarded. So there is the problem. What determines in our life the difference between the good and the bad?

I think it is interesting that the parable, which Jesus uses here, is dealing with good seed and bad seed and the gist of the parable is the suitability of the soil, which is the listener’s ability to understand or accept the good seed. This is true in life. If our spiritual soil is good soil, nurtured through the power of God, then we can make sense of the words we hear and turn them into instruction for the living of life.

Jesus said at the end of this parable these words, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." What are you listening to today?

Blessings, Rip