NOTES for Luk 6:46-7:1

‘He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on rock…’ The Lord says, ‘who hears and does’. For this is really a great deal: to hear and to do. Sometimes it seems impossible for us to carry everything out in exact accordance with its spirit; it is only what we reach towards, what we try to attain with our whole soul and our whole life, and what we never in fact attain fully. Even the disciples ask, ‘Who then can be saved?’ (Mt 19:25), as they listen to the Lord and understand how difficult it is to fulfil what He commands. Yet only the one who hears and does builds a house on rock. And there is more. Let us look closely at this image of the house and realise what follows: ‘hearing and doing’ is merely the foundation. The foundation alone distinguishes the two houses. Not their architecture, not their interior furnishings, not even who lives in them or how, but only the foundation. So what seems so great a task to fulfil that it sometimes occupies all our thoughts, our whole life, is only the foundation. ‘Hearing and doing’ is merely the base upon which a building may later be raised, in which a life will unfold. How much do we think about our house's foundation? It is unobtrusive; if everything is in order, we pay it no attention. What matters to us is the life within the house; that is what we live. This is the thought we would like to emphasise again and again. Yet, for all its inconspicuousness, only the foundation allows our house to stand and us to live in it.