The Bungee Cord. 6-17-24

Hello,

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a new phone, because my old phone, which wasn’t that old, would no longer hold a charge. As the salesperson was transferring the data from my old phone to my new phone suddenly there was some sort of glitch, and the salesperson blurted out “W___ T__ F___!” I was surprised by his words, but they didn’t seem surprising at all to him as he continued to try and get the phone data transferred chatting about how this had never happened to him before.

I grew up in a home where swearing just wasn’t part of our vocabulary, as a matter of fact even the devil’s domain was dubbed “h…e…double toothpick”. I don’t know why my parents never swore but my suspicion is that as Christians, they thought they shouldn’t. I remember when I was in elementary school when many of the boys showed they were cool by swearing. They often tried to get me to swear, but it was too engrained in my brain that you just didn’t swear.

When I hit adulthood, I tried to understand why my parents and I did not swear, and I decided that those words were nothing more than verbal pollution. Many of them filled the air with filth and degradation, degrading people and degrading God’s creation. I came to see how using God’s name in vain was a blasphemous lie, because when a person uses God’s name in vain that person is telling the world that God is nothing…nothing more than an exclamation mark. In a world that clogs our ears with words of hate, of fear, of put-downs, of hard heartedness, of pressure and judgment…..I don’t swear because I don’t want to add to all that mess with verbal garbage.

Sometimes, however, it seems like my ears get clogged with such words like a drain gathering hair, clogged to the point that I can’t hear. I can’t hear the pain that is exploding in a teenager’s life who is trying my patience by their acting out. I can’t hear the soothing words of peace that are said to me when I am feeling crushed. I can’t hear the terror in the voice of a parent wondering if there will be food on the table tomorrow. I can’t hear the laughter from the lungs of one who has just heard “the cancer is gone”. I can’t hear the “wait for me” from the elderly person who just can’t keep up with the world. Living in a world that is constantly dumping buckets of verbal garbage into our ears, my ears get clogged, and I can’t hear.

But therein lies one reason why I attend worship at my church every week….to clean out my ears so I can hear. Once, when my ears were literally clogged with wax, and I literally could not hear, I went to the doctor who looked into my ears and said, “Your ears are completely clogged.” So, she went and got a bottle of clean water and attached a “squirter thing” that looked like a small gravy baster to it. She aimed it into my ear. I could feel the water gush into my ear canal, and suddenly, I could hear again! That is what happens to me when I worship on Sunday morning. Jesus, figuratively, looks into my ear and shoots his cleansing words into them…words that have the power to break up the world’s garbage clog. “I love you.” “I forgive you.” “You are the apple of my eye.” “I died and rose for you.” “Nothing in life or death will ever be able to separate you from me.”

Those words are powerful words, words containing the power that made and holds all of creation together. As those words are sprayed into my ears, I can feel them working like a pressure washer, and suddenly I find that I can hear again! And with the same joy that I felt as I left the doctor’s office, there is joy deep in my soul knowing that I will hear the most important things in life, and the sound of those things will reach my heart creating a volcanic eruption of love, compassion, hope, peace and abounding joy.

Let me invite you to church this Sunday so you can have your ears cleaned and hear again!

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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