Lent is a time to "dial in"

 

One of the greatest resolutions we can make, especially during Lent, is to listen to the Lord more attentively and to obey what we hear.  For most of us, this will take some real change.  It will take some "tuning in," much like finding a station on a radio. 

I was making a 350-mile drive for work one Sunday night several years ago as was my routine.  That routine included listening to a “news talk” radio station out of San Francisco to help me stay awake.  All of a sudden, there was static on the radio in an area I was usually able to get reception in.  I started fiddling with the dial, and the only station that would come in static-free was a national Catholic channel.  The program playing was called “Sunday Night Live”, and the host (a priest) and his guests were talking about the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  I was feeling a little uncomfortable since I hadn’t been to confession for quite a while.  I thought, “I’ll listen to this stuff until I get to the next major city where I know I’ll get my familiar talk-radio channel back.”  When I got to Fresno, again the only channel that would come in was the same one I had been listening to for the last hour or so, and now a different panel was talking about the Graces received by going to confession.  The next day, all of my familiar channels were available again.  I have never been one to ignore subtle hints (like being hit over the head with a sledgehammer), so I found the nearest church offering confession on Monday and took advantage of the Sacrament.

This is what I believe the Scripture passages I’m writing about today are telling us– not so much about listening as about fine-tuning.

In Jeremiah the Lord says: “Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and you shall be my people.” Then we hear: “This is the nation that does not listen to the voice of the Lord, its God . . ." [Jeremiah 7:23-28]

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus drives out a demon in a mute man, giving him a voice.  When the healed man speaks, though, some of the crowd claims that Jesus does His work by the power of Beelzebub [Luke 11:14-23].  They were clearly not tuned in to Jesus’ message; had they been, they wouldn’t have drawn the wrong conclusion from merely watching Jesus’ actions from a distance.

I believe that Jeremiah and Jesus are trying to give us the same message: to fine-tune our hearts and minds during this Lenten season.

Just like I had to keep ‘fiddling’ with the radio dial to find the message I needed to hear, so must we gently “tweak” our daily lives.  That’s why Lenten observances, though they may seem petty and out of date to some, are so important: They’re changes to our normal daily habits.  They’re little attempts to fine-tune our ears so that the voice of the Lord may come through loud and clear.

So how do we know when we are dialed in to the right frequency?  First, we can easily differentiate static from an intelligible voice.  It’s so easy to simply bask in the static of our everyday lives.  Many of us do this every day, as we putter around the house with the television droning on in the background.  Many of us also have all kinds of domestic details bouncing endlessly around in our heads.  These day-to-day details are important and necessary, but do we also take a little time out each day to tune them out and tune the Lord in?

Once we’ve dialed away the static, do the words describe the action we came to hear?  Notice I didn’t say “want to hear.”  This is an important distinction – the real action versus the desired outcome.  When we tune our radios to hear our favorite sports teams in action, we don’t always get to hear about them winning.  Sometimes they lose.  If we’re true fans, we still listen anyway – they are our teams, and we are their fans.

This is what drove Jeremiah nuts: the people listened to prophets only if they told them what they wanted to hear.  If the prophets told them something they didn’t want to hear, the people tuned them out.  They didn’t “listen.”

So this is a great opportunity for us to take a look at our Lenten observances.  Are they helping us tune in to the voice of the Lord?  If not, it may be time to tweak them a little.  Don’t give them up, maybe nudge them one direction or another until the voice of the Lord comes through loud and clear.

We want to be obedient Lord, but sometimes we’re so distracted from hearing Your voice.  We thank You for this time during Lent, where some of our TV’s are turned off, and we’ve tried to quiet our lives of other distractions so that we might hear Your call to be reconciled, and thus be able to follow You in your ways.  We pray for the wisdom to know should the kingdom of God be upon us.  Jesus, I trust in You.