“How many times must I tell you?” Most of us have heard it in a kitchen, usually from a mother holding a dishcloth. Most of us have said it too, to a child who leaves the gate open, to a husband who never quite hears about the leak under the sink, to a teenager who swears no one mentioned the exam was on Monday.
It is some comfort to know that Jesus had the same experience. In Luke 18 He takes the twelve aside and tells them, as plainly as words allow, that He is going up to Jerusalem, that He will be handed over, mocked, flogged and killed, and that on the third day He will rise. It was not the first time He had told them. Then comes one of the most honest verses in the Gospels: they understood none of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what He was talking about (Luke 18:34).
It is easy to shake our heads at the disciples. It is harder, and more useful, to notice how often we do the same.
Why we don’t hear
The disciples were not stupid. They were listening through a set of expectations. They had already decided what the Messiah would do, and suffering was not on the list. So when Jesus spoke of the cross, the words went past them. They heard what fitted their plans and let the rest fall away.
Homes are full of this kind of hearing. A wife says, over months, that she is worried about how much the extension is costing. The husband hears “she doesn’t believe in the project” and stops listening. A father says he is tired and needs the grown children to help with the yard. They hear “Daddy is complaining again.” An elderly mother keeps mentioning that the stairs are getting hard. Nobody wants to hear that she may need to move, so nobody hears it.
Often we are not refusing to listen. We simply have a picture of how our family, our house or our future is meant to go, and anything that does not fit that picture is hard to take in. Fear, anger and pride all make the filter thicker. Anyone who has tried to talk to a frightened family at a hospital bedside, or an angry one at a land meeting, knows how little can get through.
Why Jesus said it anyway
If the disciples could not understand, why did Jesus keep telling them? Luke gives us the answer at the empty tomb. The women arrive with spices, find the stone rolled away, and are met by two men in shining clothes who say, in effect: He is not here. Remember how He told you, while He was still in Galilee, that He must be crucified and rise again. And then: “And they remembered his words” (Luke 24:8, KJV).
The words had been planted long before they could be understood. When the disciples’ plans collapsed completely, when every expectation they had carried to Jerusalem lay in ruins, the words were still there, waiting. God had been working all along, underneath their confusion.
That is a great comfort to anyone who has said the same true thing at home again and again with no sign it is landing. Parents especially may need to hear this. The values you repeat, the prayers you pray aloud at the table, the calm way you speak about money when it is tight: none of it is wasted just because nobody seems to be listening today. Words can wait for years before someone says, “Now I see what Mummy meant.”
When the plans go wrong
There is a second lesson here. The disciples’ expectations did not come true, and that was not the end of the story. It was the beginning of a far better one than they could have imagined.
Many households live through their own version of this. The house was supposed to be finished by the time the first child started school. The move abroad was supposed to be for three years. The land was supposed to stay in the family. When those expectations fall apart, it can feel as though God has stopped working. Luke’s Gospel says otherwise. God is not limited by what we thought would happen, and He is able to carry out His purposes even through our misunderstandings and failures.
Learning to hear
So what might it look like to be a better listener at home? Perhaps it starts with asking, “What have I been told more than once that I haven’t wanted to hear?” It might be a spouse’s worry, a child’s complaint, an older relative’s quiet request, or a word from Scripture you keep skipping past. Sit with it. Ask the person to say it again, and this time, try to hear it without deciding in advance what it means.
For reflection
- Is there something someone in my household has told me several times that I have not really heard?
- What expectations about my home or family might be filtering what I hear, from people and from God?
- Where have plans fallen apart, and can I trust that God is still at work there?
A prayer
Lord Jesus, You were patient with disciples who did not understand, and You are patient with me. Open my ears to what You are saying, and to what the people in my home are trying to tell me. Where my plans have gone wrong, help me trust that Your story is bigger than mine. And bring back to my mind, at the right time, the words I need to remember. Amen.
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