Closed Ears

This week in language, we started talking about opening and closing objects.  Should be pretty easy, right?  Not so.  As it turns out, there are at least 3 different ways to close something in Lugbara, depending on what it is.  Doors and windows always opizu, but other objects only opizu if the lid doesn’t come off when it’s upside down.  Putting on a lid, cover, or box top is akuzu, and if it’s closed and hidden, like a wrapped gift, it’s abuzu.  Body parts are a whole other matter.  When you close your mouth, hand, or eyes, you abizu.  Now that we’ve got these different words and understand the patterns, it makes sense, but in the middle of it, we were totally confused, trying to figure out what determines whether you opizu or akuzu something. 

But I started thinking.  (Always trouble!)  Many times we talk about having closed our ears so we don’t have to hear what we’re being told.  When we were young and someone told a story my sister didn’t like, she would stick her fingers in her ears and sing at the top of her lungs to drown everyone out… and I know that I’ve been guilty of doing that with God.  So I asked Pamela, our language helper, if you can abizu your ears just like you do your mouth.

She said no.  The ears don’t close on their own; you have to intentionally close them.  You opizu them, just like a door.  You have to choose not to hear.

And how true that is.  When God speaks to me, I hear Him.  I know what He’s saying.  But I choose to listen to Him, to follow Him in obedience, or not.

Lord, please help me to remember to njizu my ears, not to obizuˆthem!

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.  Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it, he will be blessed in what he does.  (James 1:22-25)