A New Yoke Is Hard to Hear

Today I taught at the "Center of Hope" on Spratt Street in Charlotte. The people were wonderful. And I was able to share some insights with them that deepened their understanding of the Scriptures.

There was one lady who I noticed had a sense of anger about her the minute she walked in. I placed ten or twelve chairs in a circle and placed a laptop on the chair beside me to use in place of a printed manuscript. This particular woman walked into the room and didn't sit in the circle. Instead, she sat in one of the rows of chairs behind the circle.

I asked her to join us and she did, but immediately asked if she could get up to get something. She came back and sat down after a minute or so.

She was the only person of eleven who challenged me. (The sign of a choleric temperament.) I knew she'd bring on more, and I was prepared to be patient.

Her challenge was to tell me that not believing in ourselves to do what God asks us to do is not arrogance. So, I gently explained: "To tell God, who created me, that he doesn't know me as well as he thinks he does and shouldn't have called me, is to tell the one who made me that he doesn't know what he made." She concurred, but remained stoic.

She never smiled.

About 25 minutes into the teaching, and about 5 minutes before I was finished, she interrupted and said, "I am going to need to leave." Her body language and tone expressed frustration. She wanted everyone to know she had power by challenging, interrupting, sitting in a different place, and, finally, by leaving.

Her intent was to challenge me for control and I realized what was happening.

Shelters are filled with people whose lives are out of their control. Nothing is stable, nothing is predictable, and they have no ability to get a handle on anything. My teaching represented, for me, new insight, for her, one more thing that she was not used to and couldn't control. Her situation was so powerfully negative that she would do anything to have some control, if only to attempt control of everyone's mood.

I silently prayed for her as she left. She must be in tremendous pain.

I'm sure that Jesus must have dealt with a lot of people who were simply unable to listen to his words when he taught of his light yoke. Many people would have walked out on him for interpreting the Scriptures in a way they had never heard.

My experience today gave me a tiny glimpse of the disappointment that Jesus must have felt many times when people refused to see and listen to what he wanted them to understand.

"He who has ears, let him hear." (Matthew 11:15 NIV)

Forever learning,Johnny