As he said this, he called out, “The one who has ears to hear had better listen!” (Luke 8:8)AsleepAtMass

Woe to the over-churched. That was me. God saw me sitting in the pew, wrote a razor-sharp message, and handed it to the Spirit. The Spirit breathed into my pastor’s sermon and it flew from the pulpit. The words arced through the air, hit my eardrum, and bounced onto the floor.

I’d been practicing A.S.D. (Auditory Selective Dullness) for years. Raised in the pews, the effervescent words of life were poured over me before they had meaning. Jesus is the blah, and the blah, blah, blah. It’s a malady I fight today.

As I got older, I determined God was for retirees and recluses, and I reached for the highest numbers on the fun-o-meter. But such living never brought joy. My truest desires weren’t greeted at the door, let alone invited in to satisfaction.

Behind the temporal games I hid a longing to touch the Progenitor of life. I wondered if the enormous life in Christ lay in grasping the true meaning behind all those churchy phrases—washed in the blood, dead to sin, sanctified by grace. They were so much white noise in a preoccupied head.

One morning I woke and there beside me lay the instruments needed to open the tired phrases—a Bible, prayer, and a desperate heart. With the tools, I pried the trampled walnuts until they burst open to reveal emeralds of hope, fire-blue sapphires of love, and diamonds of truth. ‘Christ in me’ was no longer a ho-hum by-line, it was my oxygen. The words were the same, but the power exploding out of them woke me from the stupor I’d called life.

From time to time I still feel over-churched, but I attend so I can squeeze the old terminology for all the brilliant reality it will yield.

Prayer: Holy Spirit, dynamite my crusty heart with fresh understanding.