Saturday, June 18, 2011

can you hear me now?

shema
Strong's #8085
to hear, to listen, to understand, to obey

Last night, I asked my wife, "If your life was a movie, what channel would it be on?" She thought for a moment and said, "The Discovery Channel."
I like that.

So I am reading through the Old Testament in a different translation than I usually read and I come across this-
God asked Solomon,
"What do you want? Ask, and I will give it to you."
Solomon said,
"Give me an understanding heart so that I can govern Your people well and know the difference between right and wrong."

An understanding heart. God liked that. In the Hebrew, the word translated understanding is
shema,
a word that is, according to my Lexical Aids to the Old Testament,

...one of the most important verbs in the Hebrew Old Testament. It appears 1,160 times. The main idea is perceiving a message or sensing a sound.'

What we all want, ultimately, is security. We want assurance that our needs are secured. The need for food, shelter, money... hope must become fact. Security must become an indelible stain on our hearts and minds because the threat of insecurity is dibilitating to the soul. Perhaps Solomon knew that to hear God is security.

"Hear (shema), O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!"



1 comment:

  1. I thank God for the time I didn't listen. It makes my time of really listening so much more precious. Thanks my brother(Tedd)

    ReplyDelete