Listening to that Other Voice

The Gospel lectionary reading for today is from Luke 8:19-21....

Then Jesus' mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, "Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you." But he said to them, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it."

Sacred Space has these helpful comments on this brief passage....

People naturally assumed that Jesus would give first place to his family. But with one sentence he reveals that every human being can become a member of his family. Closeness to Jesus does not depend on social standing or academic achievement or affluence. It depends instead on ‘hearing the word and doing it’.
But what is ‘the word’ and how do we ‘do it’? The primary word told us by Jesus is that the love of his Father for us is infinite; we are to trust this word and live by it. As Pope Francis says: ‘When everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved’. When we know how well we are loved, and how well our neighbours are loved, our attitude to others is transformed and the world becomes a warmer place.

I think these two points are very true. We become part of Jesus' family by listening to his word and obeying it. And second, his word is a word of love: God's love for us, our love for God, and our love for our fellow human beings. We are reminded of God's love for us in such verses as John 3:16. And Jesus said that the two greatest commandments are to love the Lord our God with all that we have within us, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

But so often we forget Jesus' words about love. Thus, we need to take time to hear his word, God's word, every day. How do we do that? I believe God speaks to us in many ways: through Scripture, through prayer, through Holy Communion, through worship, through music, through our Christian friends, through reading Christian books, through taking a walk in God's creation. These are just some of the ways that we can let God speak to us. The important thing is to take time to let God speak his word of love to us every day, and then reflect that love back to him and to others. And of course, we need the help of the Holy Spirit in all of this.

C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity....

The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind. We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system; because now we are letting Him work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint, which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through.

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