Tuning Our Ear to the Truth

At evening prayer on Thursday, a line from Psalm 49 caught my attention: “I tune my ear to the truth.” The best tuning fork at our disposal is the gospel, because when we attempt to live as Jesus did—forgiving, serving, being in relationship with God—we know we are walking the way of truth. As Joan Chittister says in Wisdom Distilled From the Daily, “Listen with a critical ear for the sound of the gospel in everything you do. And don’t do what isn’t a gospel act, no matter who says so, no matter who orders it, no matter how sacred the institution that demands it.”

In our complex world, it takes a lot of effort to tune our ear to the truth—to make sure we aren’t purchasing shoes that were made in a sweatshop or drinking coffee made from beans that were harvested with child labor or investing in the stock of companies that trash the earth. Tuning our ear to the truth often requires living simply as a way of avoiding the affronts to the gospel that are engrained in much of life in our society.

We can take comfort in knowing that if we keep our ears and hearts open, God promises to lead us in the way of truth. Let us pray that we and our world will be willing to undergo the tune-up we need to live more harmoniously in 2018.