In today’s reading [Colossians 1:21-23], we find Saint Paul writing about alienation from God because of what he calls our ‘evil behaviour’ (NIV(UK)). The way we think, act, live, our instincts and everything are a problem in our relationship with God. We are our own worst enemies in making it difficult to see and hear God.
In the last decade or so of his life, my late father became increasingly deaf, and with his growing deafness the number of people in the family and amongst his friends whose voices were audible to him gradually shrank. Jokes are made about men whose deafness means they hear their male friends and not their wives. It is no laughing matter, but real, that the fist sounds to go from the register of an older person may well be those of higher pitched, and therefore female and younger voices.
It became a joke between my daughter and me that one Sunday, sitting and struggling to have a conversation with Dad in anything but my best ‘pulpit voice’ and Helen using her ‘working with children’ voice, he suddenly said, ‘there’s a combine working in a field over there.’ There was indeed a faint background drone coming from some distance away in exactly the direction he had indicated. We joked that combines were more important to father than we were and of course he could hear them. The reality was different and everything to do with the pitch of the sound.
Saint Paul goes on to write to the Corinthians that our deafness to God can be overcome by being reconciled to him. If we stay faithful and trust that the death of Jesus Christ really was for us then because of the reconciliation between God and humanity brought about by Jesus, we will always be attuned to God. God’s voice will become the background sound that will always cut through the other conflicting sounds to be audible to us.
My father always wished he could be driving the combines he saw and heard in his old age. Part of harvest, not a spectator.
Are we part of God, his plan, and his work, or simply spectators? Do we even sense his presence?
A prayer
God, we thank and praise you that you can break through to us in our human deafness and by a miracle you can bring us round to wanting to keep in touch with you always and whatever is going on. We thank you for being there for us and wanting us to listen out for you We pray for your help to enable us to hear you, for Jesus Christ’s sake, Amen.