“I have heard their cries for deliverance.” Exodus 3
Back to our theme of this week — what does it mean that God knows? How does God know? One way is by “hearing. A father may, from behind his newspaper, vaguely ‘hear’ his young son moaning after he has returned from a hot tennis practice on a humid summer day, and he may utter some comfort such as “Yep, sure is hot today.”
But the Hebrew word, shama’, conveys far more than such a hearing. Here is the idea of “active listening” taken to its final conclusion. We hear “God ‘heard’” many times in the Bible. In Genesis 16, God heard Hagar’s affliction, and He intervened (perhaps not in ways we might consider helpful, “Return to your mistress and submit to her…”, but nevertheless, in His sovereign love, He acted on her behalf.) Later in the same story, He heard Ishmael’s voice when Hagar had thrown him in a bush so that she would not have to hear it, for to hear meant to feel the pain. For God to hear means God will become actively involved.
What do you think about God’s hearing? Think about stories that caused you to question whether God was hearing you. Think about stories that showed you how God became actively involved because he heard.
