The word “Come” often makes me stop, right in the middle of a sentence, because it causes me to remember when that word was spoken into my heart. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about you can read the story on the homepage of my blog, chairsontheporch.com. The word “come” has become so meaningful for me.
Well, today another word has started to surface. I see it often when I am reading my bible, and notice it in the things I have written. Not like how I’m writing now with prompts and spellcheck and the delete key, but writing in a notebook things I have been thinking about, pretty raw, often one or two words, spelling optional. And it is showing up often. I think it is one way God gets our attention, by repeating over and over, in sort of random ways, what he wants me to hear. I have heard it described as a holy echo.
That happened this week. At the men’s bible study we had been studying the book of Isaiah and this week was the final week of our study, so we were sharing insights, things that struck us as we studied Isaiah.
Well, I had something I wanted to say. So I turned to a passage of Isaiah. My friend Perry was In the center of the group passing a mike to people who wanted to talk. Perry watched me thumb through my bible and sensed I had something I wanted to say. As he started to hand me the mike I realized talking wouldn’t work. I was so tired, my brain was so tired. We had a group of volunteers at the camp where I am working, and it wore me out, not physically, but mentally, my brain was frazzled. Too frazzled to talk. Talking with aphasia takes a lot of brain energy, brain energy that I didn’t have. So I declined the mike. (Get this, I was so tired the night before I fell asleep during the first game of the world series between the Yankees and the Dodgers. Yeah, but I woke up in time to see Freddie Freeman hit a walk off grand slam to win game one. Whoo hoo.) Anyways, I sat there with my bible opened to Isaiah 55 too tired to talk.
While I was sitting there with my thoughts the mike was passed to Lars, my cousin. He commented that he really likes Isaiah 55. Wow, the same chapter I was planning to comment about. He started out with, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters’. How cool is that, the word “come”. But that wasn’t the word I was thinking about. Lars paused for a moment and said, I can’t tell you how often God tells us to listen in Isaiah. Wow, again. “Listen” is the word I was thinking about. “Listen”. Lars continues, we often pray without listening. When I am on the porch doing my devotions, while I’m praying I have really been trying to listen. Lars said everything I wanted to say. It was a holy echo.
“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David.
Isa 55.2-3
The word “come” appears five times, five times! The word “listen” appears three times. ”Come and listen”, can you hear the echo? I have commented in my blog that my devotional journey through a stroke began when I heard the word “come”, today it continues with the word ‘listen”. I can’t believe how dense my spirit is. I grew up in the church. I have a degree in christian education. I have always tried to do the right things. And God says just set all of that aside, come to me and listen.
There is this thing called, noun–verb dissociation in aphasia. What is it? The long answer can be found in scientific journals. I just read one. It was long. The short answer is, they just don’t know why it happens. But they know it is happening. Putting nouns and verbs together is hard for people with Aphasia. In their brain there is a dissociation between nouns and verbs.
I can remember the first time I tried to compose a sentence using a verb. The verb I was working on was “design” with some picture prompts. My first attempt at writing resulted in this, “The skulper design a statue!” “The architect design the building”, and “The web designer design website”. Probably 10 minutes of work to compose three easy sentences. It was so hard for me. But I worked on it week after week. I remember hating those assignments. Of all the things I did in my speech therapy, this was the worst. Trying to connect verbs and nouns. But somehow something changed. It was still hard, but I started to like putting sentences together. Which eventually led me to starting my blog.
All that to say, four years into my spiritual journey through a stroke, I now have two words in my spirit, two verbs: come and listen. I guess I am working on a sentence in my spirit as well. I’m hoping for this: Come to me; listen, that you may live. That you may live the abundant life God promises.
I mention in my last post about the tower of Babel that there is another story in the bible about language. Well, it’s still there. Maybe next month? As I think about it, it isn’t so much about talking, it is about listening.
All of us who have believed have come, but are we listening? Aunt Thelma