Do You Hear What I Hear?

Recently my Mom was visiting with us and it was pure torture for my wife. Not because she does not love my Mom, she does dearly. But between my Mom and I we were driving her nuts with “ugh?”, “What did you say?”, “I didn’t hear you.”  Apparently, my mom’s hearing is getting as bad as mine and we were pushing my wife to the edge.

I’ve had poor hearing for several years and gone through at least three sets of hearing aids. Yes, the hearing aids improved my hearing, but they drove me crazy with the itching and repeat ear infections so I stopped wearing them. Consequently my wife puts up with having to constantly repeat herself, I miss bits of conversations with friends, and I must ask my co-workers to repeat themselves once, twice, or three times before I understand what they are saying. Not a good thing for sure.

Right now I have my hearing aids in. I hear the keys on my keyboard, the whirl of the hard drive, things I don’t normally hear. There are a great many other things I don’t normally hear without my hearing aids. You could expect the normal things like kids playing in the yard next door and birds chirpping. But there are everyday sounds that many of us don’t really process until we can’t hear them. For example;  the shuffle of my feet on the carpet, the rustle of unwrapping a Pop-Tart, the splash of pee in the toilet, wind rustling past your ears, the fridge running or the soft sound of your spouse breathing as she sleeps next to you and more. In fact, for me, with my hearing aids in the world is a very noisy place.  Sounds that are commonplace for regular hearing folks have become a distraction to me.

There is a spiritual side to this as well. I don’t hear God as well as I used to either. It’s not because I don’t listen, it’s because I don’t always hear. Or if I do hear, I don’t always like what I hear. It can be a distraction from my routine and so I tune it out.

Jesus was asked by one of the scribes in Mark 12:28, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered with the Jewish Shema from Deut. 6:4, “Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and will all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” 

The emphasis in this phrase is not so much the love or the heart, soul, mind or strength. The key to this verse is shema – “listen” or “hear”. Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord in the garden, God heard Israel’s cry of oppression under Pharoah’s thumb. David cries out to God, “hear my prayer O God.”  If we do not hear or will not listen, we miss  what God is attempting to say to us. Naturally, God speaks today through his word – that involves reading. But if we do not hear the words or listen to the instruction we are simply doing the exercise of flipping pages.

Just like sounds I’ve forgotten, my heart and mind often fails to hear the words of scripture. I miss the intimacy of prayer because I speak and seldom listen.  Perhaps it is time to put my spiritual hearing aids on and become tuned in  to the sounds of God’s presence, the power of his word, and the joy of his salvation.