The Word and “What?”

Tis the season to be…thinking about the Incarnation. Some things you just don’t get until you get there. Before I got married, I would have never gotten this comedic comment. In fact, it probably wasn’t until I got about fifteen years into marriage that I would have gotten it. “It” is the quip I just read: “90 % of marriage is simply yelling ‘What?’ from other rooms.” Until you get there, you won’t get it; so, I will explain it for those who haven’t and don’t. It involves one of those unique things about wives that simply dumbfounds husbands and causes them to gaze wonderingly but lovingly at them. I don’t share this as a flaw in a wife. It’s only one of those endearing differences that keep husband and wife from getting bored with each other. I certainly am not trying to start a gender war—not in today’s climate, anyways. It’s just one of those ways that God gives unity through diversity. But, enough of rambling. Let me just tell you how it is: When my wife has something really important to tell me, she might be right beside me in the room, but she immediately heads to the furthest most room of the house. Opening the door of that room’s closet, she seeks out a shoebox in its most distant corner. Leaving the shoebox in the corner, she takes off the lid and with great care she whispers into the box what she needs to tell me. It took lots of practice and remonstrations for me to realize that when the house gets that quiet it is because my wife is telling me something really important. I have even learned to recognize that distant mumble rumble as being her voice. None of it is distinguishable as communicable words, so, instinctually, a yell of “What?” always and regrettably slips out of my lips. I have revealed the unpardonable: I did not hear, or, rather, as it will be otherwise interpreted, I was “not listening.” At this point, whether I go to find her, or upset at not having been heard she comes to find me, the next words are very clear, “You are losing your hearing. You can’t hear anything.” No, I did heard that I can’t hear. When God had something really important to say to us, He didn’t go stick His head into the inner core of a distant planet in the further most solar system of the further most galaxy in an exponentially distant parallel universe. He got as close to us as He could possibly get. He came to the “house” where we were. He came to our planet. He came into our humanity. And here, paradoxically, although He came to the same house, it gets a bit like it was with my wife. Instead of saying what He had to say in the palatial courts of Rome or even Jerusalem, He went to the backroom of a place called Bethlehem. There in the closet of a cave-barn on the outskirts of that backroom, He put His Word, what He had to say, in a manger, as it were, a shoebox. Yet, there was no mumbling to that Word. It was heard clearly; Mary wondered, the angels shouted praise, and the shepherds came and left forever changed. Never was that Word secretive, unclear. At His trial Jesus pointed this out: “I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing. ...ask them which heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said.” (Joh 18:20-21). Yes, Jesus has come into the room with something to say. He will even stick His head (so to speak) into the closet of your heart of hearts. No reason, to say “What?” You can hear Him. (My wife can have equal time next week if she chooses.)

The Word and “What?”

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