Day 4 - Issue 24
Matthew 2:8 NLT
Then he told them, “Go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child. And when you find him, come back and tell me so that I can go and worship him, too!”
I’ve spent the majority of my life in communication. I’ve written before that in my youth I widely used lies to cover my tracks and navigate my way through challenges at school and home. It never felt bad; the only stress was remembering what web of lies I’d already woven so I could keep ahead of my story.
As a young graduate, I became involved in evangelism and promoting the charities that employed me. Here the stress was seeking to turn supporters into financial donors. Nothing wrong with this, for how can great things happen without people giving to causes they embrace? Problem is that this style of communication often leads to an overselling of the cause and creating a product. It’s true from the platform as well. The danger is to overstate the case or reduce it to a binary decision, which everybody knows is to do serious injustice to any subject.
Eventually I began to realise that communication was more about listening than it was talking. The old adage “two ears, one mouth” proved a helpful reminder. Yet, I am still all too ready to speak and often my speech carries embedded judgements, accusations and assumptions. Someone listening may hear, even accept, all these, assuming I myself believe them all. In fact, I may have tailored my words to meet a specific situation. I may be manipulating language for my advantage. Herod does that here. He commends the Magi, and sends them on their way while seeking to employ them as his unwitting informants. He appears to join with them in the joy of discovering Messiah, when his real intent is to destroy this potential upstart and threat to his role and rule.
Language can easily be used to manipulate situations and people to our advantage. It’s the reason, I think, why prayer is so often simply reduced to a technique or method. Like the Magi, prayer should lead us into the very presence of God.
QUESTION: How can the way you communicate be more truthful or more loving?
PRAYER: Lord God, train me so that as scripture says, my “yes” will mean “yes” and my “no” will mean “no”.
