Listening

For modern human beings, reason and experience play such an important role in what is real or true.  Something is real or true only if I can feel it or if it makes logical sense to me.  Of course, what is central to such a modern construction of reality and truth, is the “I” or “me”.  Reality or truth is something that is constructed within me, because both reason and feeling are faculties of the inner self.  However, more often than not this construction is far removed from the biblical picture of reality and truth.  For example, Psalm 81 puts the emphasis on listening as the crucial aspect of reality and truth:  “…you called… I answered you… if you would but listen to me… but my people would not listen to me… if my people would but listen to me (81:7-13).  Listening requires relationship and community.  At the heart of the Christian faith is a speaking God who seeks to be in relationship with a listening people.  The psalm knows very well the dangers of not listening.  The alternative is the inner voices of the self:  “So (if not listening) I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices” (81:12).  God will speak to you and me today in many ways if we care to be in relationship with Him (seeking Him in his Word and through prayer) and other people (finding Him behind the face of the other that will cross our path today).  Are we listening to hear His voice?

It is not about me

“It is not about me.” That is John the Baptist’s message whenever people asked him who he is (John 1:29-42).  He always points away from Himself to the Lamb of God (1:29-34).  Someone once said, if John the Baptist had a Facebook page, his profile picture would have been an image of a long finger pointing away from himself to Jesus.  It is not surprising then that the Gospel of John tells the story of Jesus’ first disciples as a discovery that “it is not about me” (1:35-42).  Jesus’ first words in this Gospel do not come in the form of a command (as in Mark) or a sermon (as in Matthew) or a quotation (as in Luke), but in the form of a profound question.  The question, “what do you want” literally translated from the Greek means “what do you seek“?  When Andrew heard this seeker-question from Jesus, “the first thing he did was to find his brother Simon (to be named Peter) and tell him, ‘We have found the Messiah'” (1:41).  Andrew realized that when you get to know Jesus your life change to be not about yourself, but to always point others to Jesus.  God will always bring you and me in the presence of many seekers that are hungry for being directed to the Lamb of God.  Can we point them in the right direction?