Hearing and Doing

I was supposed to go to the beach this morning to watch the sunrise with squadmates. But I’m here instead watching a woodpecker bore a hole into the trunk of a kiwi tree outside our balcony. I’m thankful I stayed back this time, I’m thankful I get to spend time with the LORD. It’s been loud lately, with most of my time being spent in the presence of other people, people with needs and opinions of their own. Conviction sets in the back of my throat as I realize how often my squad has been receiving the remnants of my exhausted love instead of the overflow of a heart brimming with the Spirit. 

But be doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. (James 1:22-25)

Hearing is the easy part of faith. Doing is the hard part. Hearing is where faith is received, doing is the necessary outcome of a living faith. Failure to act out in faith is a case of mistaken identity. In the passage above, James explains that failure to do the law is like someone who forgets what they look like when they turn away from the mirror. A mirror reflects a person’s identity, so when we look into the law as if it were a mirror, it shows us who we are. Negligence of following the law means that we have forgotten who we are and Who we belong to. I guess it’s easy to look into a mirror and complain about our appearance, wishing we looked different. Or, it’s easy to be proud about how we look, choosing vanity because it is comforting. But a healthy heart looks in the mirror to do something, to fix stray hair or apply lipstick. Of course, this is a metaphor for our souls, that when we look into the law, conviction follows, so the preferred action is to adjust and move on.

What I’m trying to say is that I was a woman who immersed herself in the Word daily, but forgot to apply it to my life. I searched the law of liberty for comfort and only found blank pages staring back at me because I was unwilling to do what it said. I was tired, and I refused to persevere. So I pulled out my Bible each morning, read a few chapters, complained a bit in prayer about how hard my life was, and went about my day as if I hadn’t just held in my hands the very Word of God. As if my every breath didn’t rely on His command, as if I had never known the fullness of His mercy, or experienced the tenderness of His embrace. I’m not ashamed of the way I acted, since it is a natural mechanism of a tired human living in a tired world, but I do regret it. I regret it because I deceived myself by being a Hearer of the Word, and not a Doer. 

Now I am sitting on the balcony drinking tea and asking myself what I should do now. And what do you do when you realize how far you have strayed from the person you thought you were? What do you do when rebuilding the crumbling edifice of your life seems too exhausting to even think about? What do you do when you know you have hurt people because you were too scared to put more effort into your relationship?

You look at yourself in the mirror with the intent of fixing. You listen to the law that gives freedom, and then do what it says. You pick yourself up, because no matter how exhausted you are, it is better to trudge slowly through the mires to the cross than to sit dying in your own complacency. Yes, you were wounded. Yes, there is grace. Yes, you can cry. But don’t deceive yourself. Be a Doer.