A couple of months ago my wife and I drove into the city to listen to Zubin Mehta direct the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It brought back memories of an afternoon in the early 1960s when we ditched a sociology class at La Sierra College to hear the same conductor and the same orchestra. I don’t remember what they played back then, but the program this time consisted of a single work, the Second Symphony of Gustav Mahler, popularly known as the "Resurrection."

The Second Symphony is a gigantic landscape of sound that stretches across vast ranges of human experience, drawing in folk tunes, dances, marches. The opening movement raises humanity’s greatest question with wailing strings, thundering drums. and resounding brass: Is this life all there is? Or is there more to come?

The movements that follow seek an answer to this question, probing first in one direction and then another. After an hour or so of these explorations the instruments fell silent and a chorus, which had sat on stage for the whole evening, just waiting, stood to its feet and in barely a whisper, sang the promise of immortality. "You shall rise again. The Lord of the harvest gathers like sheaves those who have died. He who called you will give eternal life."

Why does a master of sound resort to words to bring his greatest work to a close? "When I conceive a great musical picture," Mahler wrote to a friend, "I always arrive at a point when I must employ the word to bear the musical idea."

What is it about words? We all know that music reaches us in ways that words can never touch. But in the end only words express our deepest longings, only words give voice to our highest aspirations. Mahler, like Beethoven before him, turned to words to express his most important ideas.

I read somewhere that infants, long before they understand what they hear, can sense the difference between intelligible speech, no matter what language it’s in, and meaningless sounds. So, it looks like we are hard-wired for words. A capacity for words, a desire for words, is part of our very makeup.

We can’t imagine anything without them. Without words, the mind has no life. In the textbook case of what words mean to us, Helen Keller, rendered deaf and blind by an early illness, finally apprehended the power of words through the persistent efforts of Anne Sullivan, the miracle worker. Later on she tried to describe what life was like for her before that incandescent moment. "It was nothing but a blank," she said. "It was nothing I can describe. It was nothing. Just a vast emptiness."

What is it about words? Words were a source of wonder in the ancient world. For a Hebrew, nothing could be worse than losing the ability to speak. "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, cried the exiles in Babylon, let my right hand lose its cunning; let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." The Greeks, too, marveled at words. In fact, they came to believe that there is a word in reality that corresponds to the word in our mind-a conviction that led to philosophy and ultimately to science. It was a concept that early Christians used to describe the universal significance of Jesus Christ. "In the beginning was the word,…and through him was everything made that was made."

What is it about words? We can’t live without them.

When the children of Israel stood on the borders of the Promised Land, with the fulfillment of all their hopes just ahead, Moses reminded them of where they had been, and talked about where they were going. He told them they would soon enjoy a settled existence. They would live in houses they had not built, they would eat the fruit of vines and trees they had not planted. They would enjoy peace and security.

But, he said, there was something they should never forget. "Human beings do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." We live by words, and having words to live by is just as important as food and shelter. According to Jesus, it can be even more important. Centuries later, he quoted Moses, when the devil urged him to ease his hunger and turn stones into bread. Get behind me, Satan, he said. "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."

One of our greatest problems today is the fact that it is so difficult to hear. Not because there is nothing to listen to, but because there is too much to listen to. We are awash in a sea of verbiage. And all that sound dulls our capacity to care about what we hear. Serious listening is a dying art. It takes considerably longer to perform one of Shakespeare’s plays today than it did in his lifetime. We can’t follow the language fast enough to make sense of it.

Our problem today is not finding words to hear, it’s finding the right words. There are words everywhere it seems. But no words to live by. Where do we go for those?

We need something that lasts. We need something that will still be there when all our data is outdated, our explanations are exploded, and our favorite theories lie in tatters. And that’s why the word is so important. It was there is the beginning. It will be there in the end. It is the one thing we can always count on. "The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever."

After he fed the five thousand in Galilee, Jesus’ popularity soared. His approval ratings were sky-high. He was the talk of the countryside. People flocked to him in great numbers, and eagerly awaited his next miracles. But then Jesus delivered a sermon on the bread of life in the synagogue at Capernaum. And that changed everything. The people didn’t like what they heard, and they began to leave as rapidly as they had come. They abandoned him in droves, and it looked for all the world like his mission would collapse. Finally, perhaps fearing the worst, he turned to his disciples, the twelve, who may have been the only ones left. He asked them, "Do you also wish to go away?" To which Simon Peter replied, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (John 6:67–68). What is it about words?

"By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and the host of them by the breath of his mouth. For he spoke and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast" (Ps.33:6,9).

"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path" (Ps. 119:105).

"Thy word have I hid in my heart," the psalmist wrote, "that I might not sin against thee" (Ps. 119:11).

I recently read an article entitled "A Tower of Babble." The author bemoans the opinion glut that clogs our airwaves. At anytime of the day or night, it seems, you can find a cable channel or a radio station with political pundits divesting themselves of glib analyses, self-proclaimed psychologists instantly diagnosing the problems of people eager to tell the world the most intimate details of their lives, and sports fans whose opinions are almost always amplified with outrage. "Talking about sports, after all, can be only so interesting." And "There aren’t enough issues in sports that ought to elicit outrage on a near daily basis."

"Hear, O Israel" (Deut. 6:4).

There was a time when people hungered for news, when books were expensive and reading material was scarce. Our problem today is entirely different. Information doesn’t equal knowledge. People can get information anywhere. Our job is to help people find something worth living for. And there is only one way to do that. Find the right words, finding words to live by.

"The words that I have spoken to you," said Jesus, "are spirit and life" (John 6:63).

Apart from his death and resurrection, the words of Jesus were surely the most important part of his ministry—more important than any miracle he performed. When he concluded the Sermon on the Mount, the multitudes were astonished at his teaching. When his enemies sent officers to arrest him, they returned empty-handed with the explanation, "No man ever spoke like this man!" (John 7:46).

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