The quote below from Kafka emphasizes the need to allow literature challenge our preconceived notions and rattle our temptation to make all things sweet and palatable. The Christian ought to take this quote seriously when reading their bible. The text of the bible can become sentimental if we don't read it with listening hearts and open ears.
"If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we would also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill-fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us." Kafka
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An instructed tongue
Isaiah 50:4 (NIV)4 The Sovereign LORD has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.
O how I love these words “he wakens my ear”. It reminds me of a conductor of a orchestra whose ear is attuned to the instruments as he follows the music. The Lord’s Word becomes music to our ears as we hear and begin to harmonise with it. I love the still of the night when I sometimes wake early and listen for His voice. I enjoy my early morning readings when I can fish out and flesh out some verses that speaks to me. O that we would waken our ears and listen. The message of this verse goes further so say “The Master, GOD, has given me a well-taught tongue, So I know how to encourage tired people.” We live in a country where people have become tired of the cliché’s and repeated sayings trying to make promises to a tired people.
Our young are thinking out of the box but many are just following the crowd. I pray for this emerging young generation that hears His voice and follows His ways and direct their friends who have become tired. I pray for their instructed tongue to sustain the weary. Waken o ears and hear!
Lord opened their ears, so that they do not go back to sleep, and do not pull the covers back over their heads.
Yebo -- God carve the ears to hear your voice
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