Thursday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
“Take care what you hear,” Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel. To “take care” of something means to put time, energy and attention into it. The term “take care” often makes me think of taking care of a garden. Tending a garden involves giving it daily attention and focusing our energies on it. We must provide fruitful soil, remove the weeds and be attentive to its needs. A garden that is ill-planned and ignored will die. When we “take care” of something we are vowing to commit our time and energy into it, because we value it and find it important, which will then produce results, much like a bountiful harvest.
In much the same way when Jesus is telling us to “take care what you hear” he is asking us to commit time and energy to studying and understanding and living his words. He is telling us to not simply read His words and move on but to spend time with His words, take them to prayer, find the meaning and the lesson deep within them. He is challenging us to immerse ourselves in scripture, not simply reading it but delving into it, studying it, loving it and living it.
When we take the time to deeply study individual parts of the Gospel we can then come to understand the entire Gospel in more depth. Not only will we understand Jesus’ words more deeply but in turn we will better understand Jesus himself. As in any relationship, you get out of it what you put into it. When we give Jesus our time and our attention and we sit with him in the scriptures we begin to strengthen our relationship with him and we begin to know him more fully. The more we know Christ the more we know ourselves.
I challenge you today to “take care”. Take care of the words you receive through the scripture. Then, strengthened by these words take care of those around you, loving them as Jesus has taught us to love.
- Amanda Grimm