Ears to Hear

Joab asked, “What’s the meaning of all the noise in the city?” 1 Kings 1:41

When I was in college I hung around a lot with my dear Christian friends Ron and John. We played tennis, camped, and sometimes just goofed off. Like many young people then and today we liked to listen to music and felt it was necessary to turn on contemporary Christian music both in the car and in the dorm. We didn’t have MP3 players then (I won’t mention that 8-track tapes were the format of the day), but we had radios and we had vinyl records.

We began to notice our own tendency to turn on the music and began to joke that it was necessary to have music in order to breathe. If no music was playing, one of us would grasp his throat and make like he was suffocating. It was good for a laugh.

In Latin America, especially in places having a warm climate, the storefronts are open, the walls are cement, and the streets are filled with noisy motorcycle taxis, buses, or cars with leaky mufflers. As the result, the ambient noise level is excruciating. To carry on a conversation is difficult at best with the constant roar from outside. There is the belief among merchants that to attract business and/or make clients happy one must have a television set on the wall with the volume set to maximum. To carry on a conversation over roasted chicken in this environment is challenging. Add to this the need to hear clearly enunciated Spanish words in order to respond correctly and the frustration mounts.

Again, the sound has become the air we breathe. Here in Peru the sound is the air and the air is the sound. There is no escape from it, not in the city center, not in your bed at night. In our jungle town our windows have only screen wire and no glass so the sounds of the city and the sounds of nature float on the breezes and come crawling into our ears. Sleep becomes evasive as we lie on our beds listening to the blasting thump and grind of a birthday party or a nearby discotheque.

The sounds of the jungle town are physical audio waves that pass through the air and bounce about our world carrying words of vital communication or unwanted distraction. Another kind of sound has the same effect but in the inner parts of our lives where we accept or reject the sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle messages of the world. What motivates me, what stirs me, what captures my attention, or what bores me are all influenced by the messages that assail me day in and day out, almost wherever I go.

Whether in the midst of all of this I am able to hear God’s voice is determined by my installed filtration device. Jesus said, “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear…” Hearing is not only skin deep (or ear deep) and involves understanding. Truly hearing. Truly comprehending. Am I able to filter out the “noise” of the world: the distracting and tempting false messages that beg to affect my motives, my desires, my perceived needs? Do I filter the bombarding messages through the truth of God’s word and accept or reject the noisy messages in the light its teaching? Am I adding to the confusion by seeking out more noise and filling my surroundings with what does not honor God? Do I never take time to just be still and let Him speak to me?

I can’t escape the physical audio impulses that come flooding into my head almost continually. I can, however, close my spirit to the messages that block out the more desirable message of God’s truth. To do so I have to install the filters and maintain them. I have to turn up the sound of God’s voice in my head and heart: the oxygen that truly lets my spirit breathe.

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says…    Revelation 3:6