Eavesdropping

The human animal is a social being. Young parents can hardly wait to hear their first child talk. Then it becomes a matter of keeping the child quiet. This is the teacher's greatest problem in the school room. We all love to talk and it is clearly shown, I am told, everywhere you look by people talking on cell phones. My drivers tell me it is seldom you see the driver of another vehicle who is not talking on the phone. And, we are very curious about what others are saying. Once, as guest in a large nightclub, someone said, “everyone is talking.” I replied, “About what? Most of them don't know anything.”

Many years ago, as an Army officer assigned on the staff of the Army Hospital in Alabama, I went to the great Baptist Tabernacle on Peach Tree Street, a place I had longed to visit. The great hundred voice choir came out, never used a piece of music, everything perfected. The only problem about the entire service, which ruined the experience for me, was the noise from conversation never stopped. Before the service began, it was like the noise in a stadium. It quieted some for the worship service, but still, conversations everywhere.

When the children of Israel entered the promised land, first to be conquered was the great fortress, walled city of Jericho, present day sixteen miles from Jerusalem. God gave strict rules, which he expected to be obeyed. He wanted these two and half million former slaves to march around that great city once each day for a week, then seven times on the seventh day. He gave strict orders that not one word was to be spoken. Can you imagine two and a half million Jews marching around anything and not talking, as much as Jews like to talk. I feel sure God had his ear right down above the crowd, listening.

Many times we overhear conversations which we will never forget. Should we really move from an area to keep from hearing private conversations? Years ago, I was working in my yard. A friend, a member of a civic club to which I belonged, lived in his beautiful home right across the street from me. A wealthy man, he had lost his wife some years before. On his screen porch, I heard his son-in-law tell him in no uncertain terms his displeasure about his pending remarriage... that his wife, my friend's daughter, was supposed to inherit everything, and that this woman he's about to marry is marrying him for his money. It went on and on and became very bitter. By the way, he did remarry. We all had the misfortune of staying in a hotel or motel with thin walls. Men, and women for that matter, should be very aware that their conversations and other activities can be heard through walls.

Many books have been written about overhearing conversations (loose lips sink ships). In a time of war, the intrigue of spies, bugging devices, we all remember the American embassy in Moscow, so bug infected by the Soviets. On my second trip to the Giza Plateau, Cairo Egypt, where the Great Pyramid are located, I was put in a suite at the very top of the Meno House Hotel. The rooms had been built on top of the hotel years previous for a visit to the site by the queen of Romania. Strange they would put a blind man there with such a view. When the young man operating the elevator brought my suitcase into the room, he pulled me outside the door, pointed to the ceiling, and said, “careful, bugged.” This let me know that the room was bugged and that anything could be overheard.

I asked my guide about that later. He said, “Oh, that must be the room where the Egyptian diplomat and his girlfriend were murdered.” We know that in these Muslim countries there is little time for trials or intrigue. As an example of their justice system, if a homosexual is arrested, he goes to prison, and is never heard from again.

As a child, and I readily admit it, I had very inquisitive ears. Even to this day, because I listen to several radios at the same time, and, because of blindness my hearing has been greatly increased, I can go into any situation and hear everything that is going on, regardless of how many are talking. I never had time for cheap, useless conversation. I cared nothing for the perverted love life of stars found in Hollywood magazines, I cared nothing about the batting averages of millionaire ball players, but I thrived on history, geography, science, and ancestral stories. One night, with the window up, I overheard my mother and one of her friends talking about my mother, as a very young girl, having delivered her youngest sister. My mother, oldest child of eight, was my grandmother's assistant in raising her sisters and brother. My mother was sixteen, she did not marry my father until she was nineteen, still at home when her youngest sister was born. Everyone in this isolated community was away. My grandmother, going into unexpected labor, sent my mother to her friend, one half mile away to assist. Like everyone else, she was not at home either. So, it was up to my mother, following the directions of her mother, to deliver the child. Evidently, no one else in the family ever knew this.

The last time I saw this aunt, she is now deceased, I told her my mother her oldest sister had delivered her. She did not believe one word I said. At another time, I told another one of my mother's sisters that I had dreamed about my grandmother, my mother, and other relatives in heaven. You see, as with church, as with prayer, as with patriotism, as even with healthcare-medical advice, most people want to believe just what they want to believe. Even overheard conversations. Even admonitions from God are passed through a filter of unbelief. One of my biggest problems with Christianity now, as always, has been Christians. If the only Christ I know, were the Christ I have seen in so-called Christians, there would be no beauty that I would desire him. I have often said, I wonder how my Christian family and Christian friends would have treated me if I had gone to jail. Their Christianity is more pretending than posture, since they have treated me so shabbily in living the life I have lived. Out of sight, out of mind. I asked one of my long time drivers, in driving me to family functions, have you ever heard one of my family members speak of my military services or my many successes in any area.

Most people, most family members, had rather tear someone down than build someone up. It was the poor, lowly people, who so looked up to Christ. God made his announcement of the birth of Christ to the poorest of all humanity – shepherds. Shepards were not even allowed to go to the temple, could not give testimony in court. The Pharasses, even Christ's own family, seems to have had little regard for him. There's no record that his brother James, who wrote one book of the Bible, ever followed Christ while he was alive. Even Peter, one of the most interesting characters of the bible, had trouble comprehending. It is wonderful, magnificence beyond compare, that God has allowed us to overhear, eavesdrop on Christ, his followers, his sovereignty.

God gives us five verbs whereby we know we are his. He tells us we are called, predestinated, justified, glorified, and elected. It is essential, with joy, to know that you have this and it really does not matter what others think. If Christ were glorified by Christians, there would be no time to gossip about others, Christian or non Christian. God is interested in overhearing and eavesdropping on Christians whom he has elected, called, predestinated, to glorify, his only son. Of necessity, there must be communication, as far as we know, the only way human beings excel above the lower animals. We use communication in everything involving life. It is so essential that our conversations be filtered and purified because they can be overheard by anyone. The greatest power, the greatest comfort, to know that God's hearing is good, anxious to overhear us talking to him and talking to others about him.