Again

Have you said – or heard – “How many times do I have to tell you?” I heard it quit a bit while growing up. Said it to my children, too. Many times the lessons learned earlier (moments or months) did not show up on our radar at the right moment and we have to be told, AGAIN.

John had that problem, too:

Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me. [Matthew 11:4-6 KJV]

There’s that word – again. Go to John and once again tell him what you hear and see. Coach Horton in our church wrote a song telling this story, and I’ve written about that before in “Go Tell John.”

John isn’t the only one who had to be told things more than once. Things heard from God with no misunderstanding. After a while, when expectations were not met, the telling had to happen again.

Eve was the first, Adam the second. Don’t eat the fruit. They had been told they would die. They were told, again, with specificity that rings in our ears today. For all mankind, we are born and we die. The span of time between those two events runs from mere seconds to over a hundred years, but both occur.

Abram and Sarai come along and are told they will have a child. It took longer than they wanted, so they messed with the planning themselves and wars are fought over that today. They not only didn’t fix their problems, they added to ours.

Moses had to be told several things more than once. The Ten Commandments were physically broken in a fit of anger. Today we spiritually break them without any feeling. Moses had to listen to God twice just on those – and that was after turning Him down on the first request to be His spokesman.

Think of it – seldom ever was a God-chosen person responsive the first time. Jonah is an excellent example. When asked to go to Nineveh he ran away on a ship and was tossed overboard.  Then, when he did it right, his expectations were not met and he pouted AGAIN through a lesson with a gourd.

In 651 verses, the Bible uses ‘again’ 672 times (King James version, of course.)  It’s not used in the first three chapters. God didn’t have to do things again – He got them right the first time when creating this world.

We won’t get it right all the time. We are imperfect, but there is coming a time, Paul said:

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. (1 Corinthians 13:10 KJV)

So, we read it and tell it again and again. Maybe we’ll get it one of these tellings.