How Will You Believe My Words March 22

Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel,
and how you swore to them by your own self, saying,
‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky;
and all this land that I promised,
I will give your descendants as their perpetual heritage.’” Exodus 32:13

But you have never heard his voice nor seen his form,
and you do not have his word remaining in you,
because you do not believe in the one whom he has sent.
You search the Scriptures,
because you think you have eternal life through them;
even they testify on my behalf.
But you do not want to come to me to have life. John 5:37-40

Piety

God in heaven, how will we believe your words if we don’t take time to listen? Deliver us from everything which gets in the way of our hearing your message. Deliver us from mistaking our will for Your will. Deliver us from judging others. Deliver us from holding a grudge. Deliver us from forgetting to be friendly. Deliver us from cutting off that driver who tries to get in front of us. Deliver us from not treating our co-workers and employees with the respect they deserve as children of God. Deliver us from remaining silent in the face of injustice. Deliver us from the Internet and advertising. Deliver us from the new and deliver to us the used.

Test us so that our faith and fortitude may increase in our community in action. Help us to overcome evil with good toward each person. Help us to turn to You for everything we need like Samuel crying out “Here I am Lord.”

All your creations are good. Help us to not misuse them. Help us not to love the world for its own sake – materialism, lust for power, unjust domination over other people, greed. Your actual grace assures us that this awesome challenge will not frighten us away again. Help us to be filled with the joy in knowing You are our beloved Abba. Amen.

Study

Advocate. Intercessor. Witness.

Moses’ work did not end when he brought the Jews out of slavery in Egypt. He continued to teach and testify to the Jews about the Lord after they made it to the Holy Land. He was there on the mountain during the Transfiguration of Christ. And he remains with us today, ready to be our advocate or our accuser…the choice is up to us.

Will you let Moses continue to fight to set you free from whatever enslaves you today? Maybe the sound and the fury of the media drowned out the message of the Church today. Moses is there as prophet to try to get us to listen to the Word of God. Maybe we can’t hear the message of the prophets because we are too wrapped up in ourselves to hear the Word of God. Moses is there to cut through the clutter of messages that get in the way of our hearing God’s voice.

God knows that there are many temptations and distractions in the world. That is why he sends so many people to try to catch our attention. But throughout this Lenten season, the one word that occurs over and over is “listen.”

Listen.

Action

Sometimes, we are too busy trying to solve problems that we don’t take time to just listen.

According to the University of Colorado Conflict Research Consortium, active listening is a way of listening and responding to another person that improves mutual understanding. Often when people talk to each other, they don’t listen attentively. They are often distracted, half listening, half thinking about something else. When people are engaged in a conflict, they are often busy formulating a response to what is being said. They assume that they have heard what their opponent is saying many times before, so rather than paying attention, they focus on how they can respond to win the argument.[i]

Throughout scripture, God and the prophets and then Jesus and the disciples have all asked us to “Listen.” It was so important, that God sent different people to get our attention in different ways. Practice listening today.

1. Look at the person, and suspend other things you are doing.
2. Listen not merely to the words, but the feeling content.
3. Be sincerely interested in what the other person is talking about.
4. Restate what the person said.
5. Ask clarification questions once in a while.
6. Be aware of your own feelings and strong opinions.
7. Don’t try to solve the problems…sometimes, people just want to be heard.

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[i] http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/treatment/activel.htm