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Dear Friends, A preacher decided to encourage some folk in his church to be more active. He spoke on the necessity for service and all that needed to be done. The ‘activists’ in the congregation all volunteered to do more. He then spoke on how necessary it was to allow oneself space and time for reflection, the Christian life being more concerned with ‘being’ than ‘doing’. The lazier folk gave themselves a pat on the back and nodded appreciatively. We hear what we choose to. It is extremely difficult to ‘hear’ that with which we don’t already agree. Most people look to preaching, to reinforce what they already believe. It’s not just true of preaching. Television, newspapers, give the public ‘what they want’, in order to keep up their circulation and rating figures. In the newspaper I normally read, poor Donald Dewar became a saint overnight, by dying, when only a few weeks previously, the same newspaper had been decrying him in the most offensive terms. I would have liked to have known more of his good qualities before he died. In another newspaper I saw this week, it spoke of Uganda being ‘devastated’ by the Ebola virus. It gave graphic detail in apocalyptic terms of the effects of this virus on sufferers and how it could overtake us all. Reading between the lines it seemed to be a small outbreak that was being contained and although there is no cause for complacency, the horrific scare mongering of this article seemed inappropriate. What purpose was it serving? In fact Uganda is being far more devastated by the AIDS virus, but we’ve got less scared of that. There are those of us who seem to be prone to panic - the over conscientious, who worry over everyone’s troubles, who are driven by ‘oughts’ and ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’. There are those of us who react to the sensational and get over excited. There are others who switch off from everything and everyone and concentrate only on what suits them. No wonder Jesus had and still has difficulty getting through. His message is always the same, yet infinitely different for each one listening. We need to hear that in his teaching which goes ‘against the grain’ for us. The over active need to ‘hear’ Jesus commending Mary, for listening to him; the under active to ‘hear’ the Good Samaritan and the words ‘go and do likewise’, the sensationalists need to ‘hear’ ‘peace’, and the complacent the collect for ‘stir up Sunday’. It is not just to do with our personalities - at different times in our lives we need to ‘hear’ different things.As we do our Autumn clearing up (have you noticed the clearing of the overgrown bits of the churchyard?), let’s also concentrate on clearing space to ‘hear’ in our spiritual lives. We need to make some space to ‘hear’ what is true for us at this time. True belief is never static. There is always room for fresh revelation. Yours, Janice |