Listening ...

During these days of Lent and reflecting on the Suffering of Our Lord one of the critical disciplines that will deepen our understanding of Christ’s Journey to our cross is “listening.”

Several years ago I read the following insights into this often neglected Spiritual Discipline.

The first is from Experiencing Prayer: Three Settings, by Mark Lind. Lind writes, “During the Depression a young man saw an ad in the newspaper for a telegraph operator. He hurried to the building and room listed in the ad. When he got there the room was jammed with applicants. They young man was crestfallen. As he stood there wondering what to do he heard a steady flow of dots and dashes over the heavy drone of conversation. Suddenly, the young man’s eyes lit up. He dashed over to a door marked ‘Private,’ turned the door knob, and went inside. In a few minutes he came out smiling. He had the job. The employer told the rest of the applicants that they could leave.

As you might imagine there was an angry outcry from the group. ‘We demand an explanation,’ someone shouted. ‘This young man comes in late, bucks the line, and you hire him.’ The employer paused a moment, and then said: 'You have your explanation. All you have to do is listen to the dots and dashes.' Everyone stopped and listened. They couldn’t believe what they heard. Over and over the dots and dashes repeated the same message they’d been repeating for an hour: ‘If you hear this, come in. The job is yours. If you hear this come in. The job is yours.’”

The second insight is from As for Me and My House, by Walter Wangerin, Jr. “At the beginning of his reign, King Solomon prayed for one superior gift from God. Not wealth, not long life, but something far more valuable – he asked for ‘an understanding heart,’ which may be translated, a hearing heart. He asked, we say, for wisdom. But the genius of wisdom … is the ability to open a room in one’s heart for the talk – and so for the presence – of another. Wisdom is none other than the ability to listen.”

Joy ... The Well-being of the Lord Himself Comes to Those Who Serve as He Does

“After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked, ‘Do you understand what I was doing? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right, because that’s what I am. And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you. I tell you the truth, slaves are not greater than their master. Nor is the messenger more important than the one who sends the message. Now that you know these things, God will bless you – bring you into a well-being like He Himself enjoys – for doing them.’” (John 13: 12 – 17 New Living Translation)

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert … Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.

The Resurrection is Only as Real as the Death is Real

“This, then, is the Christ that Jesus would have us know and accept and (O Christian!) reflect:

One who came to die.

One who, in the assessment of this age, failed – an embarrassment, a folly, a stumbling block. An offense!

One crucified.

Here in the world, the Christ and His followers hang ever on a cross. The cross is foremost, because a faithless world cannot see past it to the resurrection.

And even for the faithful the cross must always be first, because the Resurrection is only as real (both in history and in our hearts) as the death is real. …

If ever we persuade the world (or ourselves) that we have a hero in our Christ, then we have lied. Or else we are deceived, having accepted the standards of this world.”

Walter Wangerin Jr. Reliving the Passion

Sin is the Abuse of God's Intentions for Us

Every sin is the distortion of an energy breathed into us – an energy which, if not thus distorted, would have blossomed into one of those holy acts whereof “God did it” and “I did it” are both true descriptions. We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument. We caricature the self-portrait He would paint. Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege.”
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer