A Famine of Hearing

Joel was a herdsman and a caretaker of fig trees and the Lord chose Joel to speak to His people, Israel.  This is a great reminder that God moves among us pew sitters to raise us up and to speak His truth.  We druther leave the responsibility to the pros on staff because we have a tendency to ignore that we also are on mission.  We are ministers of reconciliation to our traffic pattern about us.  Joel had a word for Israel and it is so apropos for today, "Behold the days are coming," declares the LORD GOD, "when I will send a famine on the land...a famine of hearing the words of the LORD."   

With all of our marvelous technology toys, especially our phones, we spend hours talking, writing texts, checking messages, and writing emails.  I wonder what is the percentage of our hearing what has been said or written?  I wonder what is our response to what we read, have said to us, or said to another?  I have left a classroom from full time teaching and I find it challenging that we must speak, repeat, repeat, and repeat throughout the day to students.  In Bible study classes, at times, I am seeing the same attitudes, the inability to choose to listen and respond.  We are gatherers of information, but the heart is not always ready  to respond in obedience.  My heart goes out to our pastors who spend hours in preparation.  We gather information and seem to store it without choosing to act upon what we hear.  In the Old Testament, the word hear carried with it the action of obedience.  

It is imperative that we move from apathy and lethargy as the responses to the spoken or written word and respond quickly to hear and to obey.  

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