LISTEN UP!

As a Christian I have continual meetings on my summit with God. I don't hear His audible voice, but I do have “ears of my heart” where I discern His voice through the help of the Holy Spirit.

The Bible has lots to say about EARS—those two strange looking appendages on the side of my head that never see each other. I'm glad that in the act of creation God didn’t suddenly change His design and place only one ear in the middle of my forehead, like one nose and one mouth. What if He had placed my human ears on the top of my head and made them long and furry and pointed and able to bend directionally? Or made the outside flap as big as an elephant’s?

I could never answer the question of whether a tree falling in a forest makes a sound if there are no ears to hear it.

How intricately God designed the physical ear. I wonder if He drew a blueprint first and tried a prototype to see if it would pick up the right sound waves, and at the same time created the sound waves with their various frequencies. Or did He just speak the ear into being: “LET THERE BE EAR” and there was an ear, perfect and entirely functioning? Imagine—the first voice Adam ever heard with his newly created ears was God’s voice!

Although Jesus’ reference to ears has primarily the spiritual connotation of attentive listening, God’s design of our physical ear is absolutely a stroke of genius. Of course, one would expect no less from the Original Creator. Could an ear have simply evolved by accident? What a fable! The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 103, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless His holy name!” All that is within me includes the marvels of the inner ear that we take so much for granted. The following is a medically and picturesquely accurate description of our marvelous hearing mechanism.

“The inner ear is like a flower bed inside a blacksmith’s shop. Way inside and down below the outer auditory canal, past the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup, sprout the tiny hair cells of the cochlea. They are planted in tidy rows along the basilar membrane like geraniums in a window box. Jesus said that the hairs of our head are numbered. I'll bet that these ear hair cells are also exactly numbered to enable us to hear! As the hammer and anvil pound sound waves into shape, the stirrup taps out the beat on the basilar membrane. That in turn sets the hair cells swaying like a breeze through a cornfield. Each of the hair cells’ undulations fires electrical signals to the brain, where we discern the cause of the commotion. Is it a cymbal crash? Or the soft exhalation of a child’s breath? Other senses may rest, but the ear never sleeps. It is an insomniac, always alert to the slightest pulses, awake to the faintest tremors. It is the last of our senses to fade when we are called from this life.” 

Let’s applaud God for creating our ears! And let’s heed Jesus’ admonition, “He who has ears, let him hear” (Mark 8:18). I do have ears that hear, although at this late season of my life I wear hearing aids. However, when I come to a summit meeting with the Lord, my time of prayer, I have to keep them tuned to His frequency so that He can say of me, “My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me” (John 10:3). God promised that His ears are open to my prayers, (1 Peter 3:12) and that if I hear His voice and open the door of my heart, He will come in and intimately share a meal with me. (Rev. 3:20)