It's Playback Time!

E

arly in the summer semester, during an orientation meeting, one of our supervisors made a statement that took me by surprise. The statement reflected a greater desire to test the oral ability of our students, a move which will give us an accurate assessment of the student’s ability and knowledge of the target language. At the end of the semester, students will be given an oral test and the test will be recorded on cassettes. This change will be simple does provide a challenge given the level of today’s technology.

Someone in the group simply asked where we would find tape recorders, also known as cassette players/recorders.  At first, this seemed a very simple request until I remembered it had been years, I mean years, since I had used one of these bulky contraptions.  Technology has progressed so rapidly and we have come so far that cassette tapes, players, and recorders are all but a thing of the past.  Cars no longer come equipped with cassette players. CD players and connections for MP3 players are now standard equipment, leaving the poor cassette lying on the hill of obsolescence.

This whole episode set my mind to thinking about a tape recorder my parents owned when I was a little boy. It wasn’t a cassette player, those hadn’t been invented yet; it was one of those reel-to-reel deals that weighed several hundred pounds and required two Ph.D. degrees from Harvard to operate.  Somewhere we have tapes of me as a little boy giving the weather report like the forecasters on television.  I was enamored with the radar and drew it on my chalkboard while explaining that the radar was going “around, and around, and down, and back up!”  Radar’s haven’t changed much since my early years.  They have more colors and can do neat stuff but they still go around and around and up and down though!

The second recording that comes immediately to mind is a recording of my grandfather snoring!  If ever there were a gold medal at the Olympics for snoring, my grandfather would have been the world record holder.  On this occasion, he was enjoying a rather extended afternoon nap. Mom placed the tape recorder in the den next to him, hit the record and play buttons, and put her little plan in motion.  The tape went on for the longest time recording every sound he made.  Honestly, if snoring could be considered the equivalent of working in a sawmill, my grandfather would have cut enough wood during that one nap to build an entire housing development.

My mom captured both of us on tape so she would have a record of our activities.  Personally, I think it was for her to have a good laugh at our expense and to hold on to some special moments in her life.  I can remember her playing back those tapes and all of us having a good laugh; even my grandfather who said he never snored “that loudly!”  He sang a slightly different tune after listening to that tape.  But no matter how many times we listened to the tape and no matter how often it was replayed, the recording was always the same and always brought back the same memories and the same chuckles.

The Apostle Paul had an idea of the value of the cassette player thousands of years before its invention.  He knew that the more we listen to and playback the eternal truths of God’s word, the more familiar they become to us and the more we incorporate them into our lives.  That is he why he wrote the following in Romans 10:17, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

Let us look at two kernels of truth in this passage. First, Paul wants us to understand that our faith grows and is possible only by hearing something repeatedly.  The more we hear something, the more we understand it, the more we know what is being said, the more we trust it and put our faith in it.  But Paul doesn’t stop there!  He continues by saying our faith comes only by hearing the word of God, the word that Jesus explained and demonstrated in all its fullness during his ministry.

The more we listen to God’s word, the more we read it, the more we make it the most integral part of our lives, the more we learn about our Heavenly Father and place our faith in him.  As we place our faith in him and trust him more and more we find that our faith is stretched and grows until we trust God completely.  This is exactly what he wants us to do; to trust him completely with all things, big and small.

The most important button on a tape recorder (cassette player/recorder) is the playback button. By pushing this button all those around the machine can hear and listen to what is stored on the tape.  The messages on that tape never change and can be reviewed and enjoyed at any time, in any place, by anyone.  For the Christian, the pages of the Bible are the playback button to God’s word.  We can hear it, listen to it, read it, share it, and enjoy it at any time, with anyone, in any place.  How long has it been since you pushed that button and replayed God’s word?  How about a little playback time today?