God Listens
(The Organization is not responsible views expressed in Article)
One of the most common things people identify with God is that
He isn’t deaf. That’s why people pray at all. We love the idea that God
listens – even the sceptic might give it a try occasionally. God’s
ability and willingness to listen is one of the most endearing facets of
His character as revealed in the Bible. But it’s also one of the most
confronting at times. That’s because God listens to
everybody’s prayers to Him, even those we don’t want Him to.
I once heard a missionary from Ethiopia say that poverty actually had
very little to do with money – it had to do with nobody listening to
you. Money is just one mechanism among many we have for getting people
to listen to us. In some
cultures, certain people who don’t have money at all are certainly not
poor. If you have the cash, a gun, or the presidential seal, people
might disagree, but they’ll listen. But without them, your voice is
worthless. And then, you’re poor.
The thing is, the Bible makes it abundantly clear that God does
listen to the poor, and especially because nobody else will listen to
them. God actually said that the central Old Testament redemption story,
the Israelites’ rescue from Egyptian slavery, occurred because “I have
heard them crying out because of their slave drivers.”(Exo 3:7) Some
quasi-historians ridicule the Exodus story, because there is no evidence
of the Israelites ever being in Egypt. Real historians know there
wouldn’t be any evidence – the slaves were too worthless for everybody
to listen to them. Everybody was too busy listening to the Egyptians.
But God listened. And soon the Egyptians had to listen.
God even listens to dead people, who we usually don’t think say much
at all. When Cain killed his brother, then tried to deny it, God said,
“Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.”(Gen
4:10) Cain had tried to shut his brother up, permanently. But God
listened. And then Cain had to listen.
This is one of those things we admire about God, that He listens to
all those poor ol’ poor… until we realise that there are actually poor
in our midst. We didn’t notice, of course, because well, we weren’t
listening. We figure they’re not worth listening to. They’re worthless.
But God listens – precisely because nobody else hears, He listens. And
then we’ll have to listen.
I think this is an aspect lost on both sides of the abortion debate,
for example. Some people argue so much about what God says with His
mouth, they forget what He’s doing with His ears. In the debate, one
major demographic involved in it doesn’t really get to have a say. They
can’t speak, you see. They never make a sound. They are, undoubtedly,
poor. Sometimes we tell ourselves they’re not actually human, anyway,
and so wouldn’t have anything constructive to add to the conversation. They’re worthless. But despite the fact we think they can’t speak – no, precisely
because
of the fact we think they can’t speak – maybe, just maybe, God listens.
He’s heard the dead before. And then the living had to listen.
Mind you, on the other hand, sometimes the protesters’ shrill screams
at a 15 year-old girl walking into clinics drowns out her voice, too. I
wonder what she’d say? We can’t ask her parents, since she’s too
terrified to tell them. We can’t ask her boyfriend, since he’s too busy
making jokes about her with his friends. We can’t ask her school,
because the PTA got her expelled because of her “bad influence” (the boy
can stay). She is, undoubtedly, poor. In fact, she feels worthless.
What about her church? I guess if they’d listened – not lectured,
just listened, the way God listens – she might not feel the need to be
going to the clinic anyway. I suspect that the other teenage mum, who
still stayed at the church down the road, found people there listened to
her. In fact, I suspect she’d be able to tell us that when they
listened, it was the first step to her realising God listened too… and
that listening was priceless.