Recently I’ve noticed that the volume on our TV set needs to get louder. Maybe it’s on the fritz. But even talking with neighbors greater than socially distanced six feet, I’m straining to hear them. Piecing together a word here and there, hoping my responses are not too off the wall. What gives?
You know. So does my wife! Hearing loss, which must be premature in my case! Wrong. I remember a singer at a Christian conference center announcing before his solo that ‘everyone here has aids.’ I’m going to jump out of my seat fleeing this infected bunch until I realize he means hearing aids! Now I can remain seated as one with aids. Thankfully, only the hearing type.
Proverbs 3:11-12–‘…do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.’ It’s only natural to wonder why things go wrong. Why Lord?
Like this infernal pandemic. Illness…death…job loss…fears abounding…plans shattered…businesses shuttered. Wake-up call from the Lord? Why Lord? To wake us up to Him? To stop pushing Him to the very edge of our lives? Why?
You know what C.S. Lewis writes in ‘The Problem of Pain’?–‘God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, and shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.’ He’s right. Our world, our culture, many pastors and churches, are willfully deaf to God’s Word.
Bible literacy ebbs lower and lower. Even God’s people are not exempt. Awhile back one of my Moody Bible Institute professors whispers to me about how little today’s Bible school students know… of the Bible! Is that possible? Seems so. If true of them, then the rest of the world can’t win for losin’ with nary a snowball’s chance anywhere. Is it time to dust off you-know-what? Could that be what Jesus is saying?
So, when God shakes you up with whatever it is you don’t need or want, what do you hear? Anything? Time to get closer to Him? Confess and repent? Look up to Him more than downward navel-gazing? Exercise your weakened trust muscles? Is that what you also hear?
Lord, I want to hear you loud and clear. In Jesus’ name. Amen.