Hearing for Life

I had wanted to write about Psalm 78,
and the theme of the Word and the Works of God.

But there is something which arrests me as the psalm begins:
     The first verse of the Psalm says "Give ear ... incline thine ear."

Sometimes the mind lags behind the understanding ... 
     and here there is a world of difference 
          between "hearing" and "inclining the ear."

To hear is to understand the meaning of the words.

But to hear with an ear which bows before the words, 
     is to grasp the significance of the message, 
          and to absorb it, at the deepest level of our being.
 
It is to give that message a place of preeminence -
     above all that we knew before.
It is to replace every other thing which our understanding and our experience has taught us - 
     with the new Word from the lips of God.
It is to allow that Word to expand and fill our whole awareness, 
     and to change us according to its message.

In the world of mankind, a language is never truly possessed, at the very deepest level, when it has not been learned in the first five years of life.

So also, when we come to the things of God unless there is a true work of new creation we cannot truly know the things of God.
We may hear, and think we perceive, but full understanding escapes us ... 

1Cor. 2.12 shows us the only way, "Now we have received, ... the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." 

     God's Word makes all things new, 

          and only as we embrace that New Creation can we really hear,

               and find our lives Complete.