His Hearing Heart

February 24

When you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it. Jiddu Krishnamurti

We allow ourselves to be distracted. Children talk to us and we give them the necessary response to what they've said but haven't drunk in the intent of their little minds and spirits. Adults present their concerns to us and we attempt to empathize but our preoccupation with other matters prevents our hearing and responding with our hearts. Over and over again we repeat this cycle of half-hearted listening and over and over again, other people do the same thing to us.

The ONE who fully hears and understands the depth of our soul's desire is the Lord Jesus Christ. Because He walked in a tabernacle of flesh, He fully understands what it means to be alive. Because "He was oppressed and He was afflicted but opened not His mouth," Isaiah 53:7, He is fully aware of what it means to endure persecution and oppression and cruelty in silence. He knows what it's like to be misunderstood and maligned. He knows in the depth of His being all that afflicts us because He has taken all our burdens upon Himself (I Peter 5:7) and He has borne them to the cross where He has died to set us free from them!

Because Someone listened to us completely and attentively, because He listened to not only our words but to our feelings, because He listened to the whole of our hearts' weeping, we have in Him the complete understanding we so desperately yearn to receive! Because Jesus, the Author of Creation (see Genesis 1:1 and 1:26; see John 1:1), bent His ear toward us we know He hears us when we pray. Because He bent His heart toward us at Calvary (see Luke 23:34), we know our needs are met, our sins are forgiven and our chains are loosed! (see Ephesians 4:8) We are free to live, to love, to bless those around us because Jesus’ empathy for us empowers us to empathize with them!

May He help us to employ the gifts He's given to us to hear not only the words that are spoken to us but the intent of the hearts that reach out to us. May He enable us to reach back to those who look to us for help and extend to them the compassion for which they long, knowing that in so doing, we are being Christ to them—by extending His love and by pointing them toward Him, we are being the living epistle in which He may be "read of all men," II Corinthians 3:2. When we have allowed Him to fulfill that aspect of His plan, we will indeed have been His true partner in enabling the world to better listen with its heart because the world will know it's been heard by our hearts--and by His.