Sunday, I found myself in a brand new place where I heard teaching that brought me “down” in just the way I so desperately needed to go. You see, I haven’t been a great hearer lately and I’ve had a heavy heart, which I believe was caused by my allowing myself to become a person of the third heart variety. Much of the teaching I heard was focused upon the parable of the sower found in the fourth chapter of the gospel of Mark; and the third heart is the one in which the thorns of the world crowd out the Word. “Thorns” have been on my mind quite a lot lately, and I even wrote a post a few weeks ago (“A Thorny Thursday”) about sins that I thought would long since have stopped knocking at the door of my soul.
The irony of not being a great hearer of God these days does not escape me; it was just a few short years ago, after all, that I published a sick season memoir titled Hear I AM. And I did hear God oh so much when I was ill. I lived, literally, for just one word from him. And then I got well; and I now seem to find myself ever-tangled in the thorns of this world, the countless cares that do indeed characterize life in this horribly fallen realm. A dear friend of mine has described me as someone who understands how very fleeting life down here is; and I concluded today that even that realization in itself can be a thorn. Anything that we find ourselves taken by, fixated on, more than Christ will choke the life right out of us.
I came across a great thorn-related charge from the likes of St. Augustine while my husband and I were browsing Intervarsity’s website this weekend. Augustine challenges us as so–“Work diligently the soil while you may. Break up your fallow with plough. Cast away the stones from your field, and dig out the thorns. Be unwilling to have a ‘hard heart,’ such as makes the Word of God of no effect. Be unwilling to ‘choke the good seed’ by the cares and lusts of this life, when it is being scattered for your good” (Oden 57). What great words from a man of God who became convinced of the reality of Christ after years of running from him and who chose to be most transparent regarding the struggles of his own fallen flesh.
Sunday’s teaching reminded me of something else I need to remember–the Word of God always does something. It can be so easy for us, amidst the thorns, to forget the reality of the power of the Word. The very first time that I was told my bone marrow was abnormal, I remember clinging to a verse from the fourth chapter of the book of Hebrews–“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow…..” (verse 12). In the face of death, the reality that God’s Word is powerful enough to penetrate the very marrow in my bones breathed a type of life into me nothing I’ve ever found down here in this world can explain away.
Yes, I was reminded that neutrality and the Word of God simply do not mix. And logic certainly would support this assertion. If something is indeed all-powerful and ever-present/eternal, then shouldn’t that something always get results? It should and it does. The human heart is either open to God’s Word or opposed to it, softened from it or hardened by it, drawn nearer to God through it or pushed further away from God because of it. Yes, the Word did become flesh–Jesus the Christ; and Jesus demands a response. That’s exactly what got to the leaders of his day. The religious sector loathed him, while the dusty villagers flocked to him–and no one left his presence in the same state in which they came to him.
I needed to be reminded of this–and thanks to a great teacher I was. This past fall, I was part of a study of the book of Mark, but none of the particulars hit me then as they did today. The soil of my heart and soul is apparently ready now. I want to be a good hearer. I need to be one. And I know now as I’ve never known before that I need to immerse myself in his Word more and more because–if I desire to not be outdone by prickly, plaguing thorns–life down here does indeed require a weapon sharper than any double-edged sword. Life here in this realm requires the Word–the Christ–if it is to be life at all.
[Thank you, Pastor/Professor Tony Merida (Imago Dei Church) for that most uplifting teaching Sunday!]
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