Listening

I’m sure most of us can recall a situation when someone with whom we were very familiar or close to offered unsolicited advice or guidance and we rejected it. Or perhaps we have tried to offer advice to people close to us, and it was shunned, unwanted, unrecognised. I can recall many instances when this has happened, especially within my family as our children were growing up, and with my siblings and parents. Who am I kidding – this still happens today! It is often the advice or guidance of others, less known, or strangers to us that we listen to. We tend to receive it more easily than from those closest to us, those whom we know well, even though it generally amounts to the same thing. How often do we close ourselves off from hearing what we need to?

We hear this week that when Jesus returned home, he found himself being rejected by those whom he had grown up around. They didn’t recognise him, his gifts, his teaching, his healing. Like many of us have probably experienced ourselves, they were blinded by their assumptions. They failed to see what he had become while he had been away, and what others had come to know of him. We too can make assumptions about what we think we know and from whom we expect to learn from, and when we do this, it is very easy to miss God’s work, often revealed by those around us and closest to us. As we respond to this weekend’s Gospel, may we remember to be open to receiving God’s blessings upon us from all we encounter. May our service to others be received by them as God’s blessing upon them.

Debbie Matheson, Lay Pastoral leader

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