I’m remembering a time, in the third grade at Mountain View school. It was when Dad and Mom came home from a parent/teacher conference and announced I had better start putting more effort into my studies and stop woolgathering. My teacher had shared that I could be looking straight at her and seemed to be listening or with book open and seemingly reading but seldom able to respond accurately as to what she was teaching or what I had just read. She called it ‘daydreaming.’ It is still an issue, I admit. Like the other day when telling Bettyann I hadn’t heard her, after being asked to pick up the mail, while in town. I didn't but probably did. And after all my years of loving to read, I am still notorious for reading sentences—sometimes entire pages—before realizing that that my mind is simply elsewhere. With my eyes moving down the paragraphs, taking in the ordered sentences, it is as if my mind pronounces each word into a room with no vacancy. I am reading in a way that can’t even be called half-hearted. I have come to the conclusion that the practical spirit of multitasking isn’t always practical for me. Illustrated by the fact that how I’m going to proceed with the transplanting of a Dalia, and dove-tailing a drawer corner while reading Tolstoy isn’t reading Tolstoy. Hearing the words, I have heard nothing. I walk away from the paragraphs as if never seeing the sentences at all.
Ah, so it is distinctly possible, as Jesus states here: to see without seeing, and to hear without hearing. I do it often, and not only with Tolstoy.
I suppose it’s like, with most communication, there are varied degrees to which I hear the stories of Scripture, the words or stories of Jesus. In other words, I have different levels of interest, concentration, and understanding. In my searching I learn that it’s like all metaphors having levels in seeing, layers to uncover, depths that call for attentiveness. I just read that Jesus’s parables and descriptions of reality ring in ears on many wavelengths. It is true that I have looked at them as moral fables, abstract stories, truthful similes (new word) and images, great and awful mysteries at which I need to pay well attention. Beautiful words, wonderful word, wonderful words of life. Words I must try my hardest not to ignore. I need to be on guard lest I become likened to a Pharisee; not recognizing myself in the storyline. Further and more importantly, that I react appropriately to any significantly mirrored images.
I’m thinking here; how often do I look into the mirror when shaving and walk away with confidence that every stubble is whacked? . I suspect, as with my less than haphazard reading, not much, until Bettyann asks me if I’ve forgotten to shave. When the Pharisees saw themselves in the words of Jesus’s parable of the talents, they were furious. Wholeheartedly, they began scheming a strategy to silence Him. Ironically, they were plotting to do exactly what the parable said they would do.
After leaving church on a certain Sunday morning, I thought of my Dad’s advise: “anything worth doing, deserves doing well and all the way,” and how Christianity describes the world with a wealth of detail. But it is more than a system whereby we believe certain information and thus call ourselves Christians or otherwise. I believe what Jesus has presented is a transforming way; it is intended to be life itself. If I merely hear God’s words, or half-see reflections of truth, I actually miss everything. Such a response cannot even be called haphazard. Like the pages I have read mindlessly—lifelessly—in seeing, in reality I have seen nothing, hearing I have heard nothing. I’m convicted by St. James’ description of this common self-deception, “If any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, walking away, immediately forget what they were like.”
Father, God, I come humble in petition of forgiveness, this morning. Forgiveness for walking away from Your Word without really noticing myself. Forgiveness for all the occasions I’ve taken in Jesus’s words haphazardly or halfheartedly. O that Your Holy Spirit will help me in clearing my mind of all the peripheral and draw me to an inescapable response of appropriate, full sensing of which Jesus beckons. In seeing that I will see. In hearing I will hear. Amen
