How’s your hearing?
Pretty good?
Pause for a second and listen for everything you can possibly hear right now.
I’m hearing rain.
Jesus was obsessed with hearing. Always telling people to listen and be very careful about what they could hear.
That’s not surprising. Have you ever heard of The Shema? It’s the most important Jewish prayer, the first prayer a Jewish kid learns. It comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-9. The first word is ‘shema,’ the verb, ‘to hear.’
Hear – the most important word about experiencing God. Because God has spoken and God speaks still.
It’s really easy to pick out people who have heard God – and I don’t mean delusional people who need medical treatment. I mean those people who have an awareness of God and an experience with God that can only come because they’ve been listening. There is a peace, a sense of purpose and an expression of love about their lives that is unmistakable.
This Sunday we look at a story in which a man who couldn’t hear or speak was brought to Jesus, Mark 7:31-37. Mark tells us the story because he wants us all to know what we all need.
Need your ears opened?
This Sunday.