Eyes to see and ears to hear

 

There’s been an unusually high level of “noise” in our lives this past year; the pandemic, election year politics, social unrest, crazy weather patterns—you name it, we’ve seen it this year.  For many of us, it’s been difficult to sort through all of it, retain our sanity, and focus on what is most important—our everlasting souls.  I’ve been finding peace within my own soul by daily reading of the Scriptures and reflections.  After 67 years on this earth, I have many experiences in life that have helped me develop an ability to see underneath a lot of commotion most of the time. 

Children who are experiencing many things for the first time in their young lives, have no idea that the adults watching them can often see right through them.  As an adult we may be chuckling and saying to ourselves, "Been there.  Done that."

Teenagers are usually a little more difficult to read.  They often feel that they’re surrounded by a secret shield that makes the adult world stand in shock and a state of dumbfounded-ness.  Parents, because of their emotional involvement with their own teenagers, can lose some of this adult perception and begin to pull out their hair in frustration.  It may take a little more intuitive ability, but teenagers aren’t that hard to read with regards to their basic patterns of growth.  Each new generation seems to need to reinvent the wheel.

A certain contemplative ability comes with age and experience.  However, there are much more profound levels of life harvesting intuitions that must be developed with prayer and reflection and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  We need to dwell with suffering; get inside and abide in the human heart; feel the pain and loneliness of others; meditate on the passion and death of Jesus; learn more about other cultures and how people feel and live their lives there.  We try not to let life just pass us by as a blur.  We try to intuit the heart of what is happening.

Scripture reveals this contemplative ability in God.  In Genesis, God not only sees how great the external wickedness of man was, but He also saw "how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved."  But God, able to read hearts, knew the goodness of heart of Noah and his family (Genesis 6:5-8, 7:1-10).

In the Gospel of Mark, the disciples, in the boat, were all befuddled when Jesus began speaking about the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.  They concluded that Jesus spoke these words because they forgot to bring enough bread for the crossing.  As He did so often, Jesus must have shook His head in amazement at their lack of understanding.  But reading their hearts and seeing their inner darkness and confusion, He responded, "Are you hearts so hardened?  Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?” (Mark 8:14-21)

Seeds of doubt and confusion are all around us.  It seems these days that almost everything the secular world promotes is in some way contrary to the Kingdom of God.  And yet, just like the disciples’ inability to see the evil leaven of the Pharisees and Herod, we also frequently fail to see the evil leaven within our society.  Instead, we allow the many errors to confuse us and lead us down the path of secularism.

One thing this should teach us is that just because someone has some form of authority or power within society doesn’t mean that they’re a truthful and holy leader.  And though it’s never our place to judge the heart of another, we absolutely must have “ears to hear” and “eyes to see” the many errors that are held up within our world as good.  We must constantly seek to “understand and comprehend” the laws of God and use them as a guide against the lies within the world.  One important way to make sure we do this well is to make sure that our hearts never become hardened to the truth.

The eyes we use to see and the ears we use to hear must lead us beyond the mere externals and help us to read the inner dimensions of what we’re experiencing.  We’re all called to this kind of contemplation.  True, some seem to be highly gifted in this area and we love to read their reflections on life.  But we mustn’t underestimate our calling to do the same.