I think I was about five or six years old the first time I remember my mom telling me to wash behind my ears. This wasn’t a one time telling, it was persistent until the day I left her home when I was eighteen on my way to a short four year career in the Air Force. So, I heard this hundreds of times, not only on the way to bathe but after I was finished with an inquiry about if I accomplished the task or not. After a while it was funny. She never inquired if I washed any other part of my body, only if I had washed behind my ears. Wouldn’t you know it, I still wash behind my ears when I take a shower. Why is that?
The constant prodding by my mom and my begrudging response and then habitual response to her request made a lifetime habit of this small action. She has been dead some twenty-five years now, but the power of those words “Wash behind your ears,” are still with me.
So what? One has to wonder how that would work with words that are really more important than my mom’s words, i.e., the words that deliver God’s story to us. How has that story made a lifetime impression on us in the way we live our lives today? Who’s story are we living in or whose words have power in our lives?
