by Russ Lawson


My hearing is slightly impaired as a result of being treated for
malaria with pure quinine while a missionary in Africa. My latest pair
of "digital" hearing aids are amazing. They bring my hearing pretty
much up to normal levels. This is to say that I can hear and understand
what is going on around me, most of the time. My major challenge is
understanding what I hear on the telephone.

A grandmother recently shared this story to illustrate the hearing and
understanding problem.

  Our five year old grandson couldn't wait to tell his grandfather
  about the movie we had watched on television, "20,000 Leagues Under
  the Sea." The scenes with the submarine and the giant octopus had
  kept him wide eyed. In the middle of the telling, my husband
  interrupted him and asks, "What caused the submarine to sink?"

  With a look of disbelief, he replied, "Grandpa, it was the 20,000
  leaks!"

An occasion in Jesus' ministry came to mind where he had to deal with
this kind of problem. Immediately after he had performed the miracle of
feeding the multitude with seven loaves of bread and a few small fish,
we find this event:

  So he got back into the boat and left them, and he crossed to the
  other side of the lake. But the disciples discovered they had
  forgotten to bring any food, so there was only one loaf of bread
  with them in the boat. As they were crossing the lake, Jesus warned
  them, "Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod." They
  decided he was saying this because they hadn't brought any bread.
  Jesus knew what they were thinking, so he said, "Why are you so
  worried about having no food? Won't you ever learn or understand?
  Are your hearts too hard to take it in? 'You have eyes -- can't you
  see? You have ears -- can't you hear?' Don't you remember anything
  at all? (Mark 8:13-18 NLT Ed. 1).

"Won't you ever learn or understand? Are your hearts too hard to take
it in? 'You have eyes -- can't you see? You have ears -- can't you
hear?' Don't you remember anything at all?"

I wonder how often those words would apply to you and me? It's not
really that we don't hear the words. It's either that the words just
don't register with us or we just don't really pay attention.

The word translated as "hard" could literally be translated as "turned
to stone" or "petrified." That was harsh language wasn't it? We
wouldn't very well like to be talked to in that way. Your preacher
might even get fired if he tried it! Yet in all honesty, Jesus could be
speaking those words to us many times, couldn't he? How many times do
we fail or refuse to listen to the instructions of God even in the
smallest of things?

I had a young man ask me recently to make a copy of a computer program
for him. I told him, "I can't it's copyrighted."

I won't because it is wrong.

He said, "What do you mean, you can copy it can't you"?

I replied, "No, I can't!"

He said, "But your computer can do it; I've don't it on my own computer
at home."

I replied, "It's not that I can't physically, but that I won't because
it is wrong."

He left with a confused look on his face. He really didn't get it. He
heard the words, but they meant nothing to him. How many times has that
happened to us in some area of our lives?

Could it be that we all, on occasion, have hearing problems, or at
least understanding problems?

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  (c) 2006 Russ Lawson <[email protected]>, Messages from the
  Heart <http://www.bright.net/~rlawson/MFTH.html>. All rights
  reserved.