What You Hear

Read Mark 4:21-33.

There are very few silent places in our world. Everywhere you go, noise follows you. Music blares at the restaurant, causing people to have to talk louder to be heard over it. Go to a sports bar and you'll see innumerable television sets, all on different channels. How could I watch any of them if I wanted to? In our cars, most of us have the radio or the iPod on. We wake up to music and some of us go to sleep to music. And even when we're on hold on the telephone, there's music playing. We hear so many things, all day long, do you ever wonder if, at the end of the day, you actually really listened to anything?

In the midst of these parables in Mark 4, there are a couple of verses that seem oddly out of place. Perhaps they are sayings of Jesus that Mark inserted here. (Remember, he's not writing a biography; he's giving a picture of the kingdom Jesus came to bring. His Gospel is topical, not necessarily chronological.) After using one of his "stock phrases" in verse 23 (a phrase intended to challenge people to really listen to what he is saying), Jesus goes on to call people to "Consider carefully what you hear" (4:24). And that makes me wonder: do I do that?

Do I carefully consider what goes in my ears? Or have I become immune to all the sounds that are, one way or the other, shaping the way I think and live? Do we carefully consider the music we listen to, the lyrics that get stuck in our heads, the conversations we are a part of? "Carefully consider" doesn't mean "avoid altogether." This is not a call to "separate from the culture" or even to "form our own Christian subculture." It means to not simply accept everything at face value. Ponder what you hear. Think it through. Don't allow just anything to take root in your heart and mind. The choice of what settles into our lives is ours. Consider carefully what you hear, because that which you really listen to is often what you will become.

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