I have been through four sets of hearing aids during the last decades with varied results. My problems are mixed in with my spirit in that the devices have been partly successful but troublesome in matters like high cost, phone conversations, and noisy contexts. They have been costly, and in my view should have been more durable. Some of the problems have been my own in that I have put those aids in places where they were damaged so that two (one of each of two pairs) I have purchased over the years were crushed in my neglect. The first pair simply quit after a couple of years and I was sold a new pair that needed rather early repair, as did the third pair (likely too small to handle their assignments at this juncture in technology). Even the hearing aid technician, a fine fellow, working with me was disgusted with the performance and moved his business in another direction with a different device. He soon retired. Feeling the costs were excessive in all, I tried to get along without aids. The experiment didn’t work well. I am now on my fourth set. They work fairly well, but not what I hoped for. I don’t expect the natural qualities.
In problems like the above, one tends to go in various directions, trying to get family members to speak a bit louder, which may work for some – never for others. Withdrawing from some participation has served me well in my private preoccupation with writing. Cocking my head this or that way to catch better articulation helps a little, but I give up in many situations and withdraw to silence. I get sound but not articulation during an era when mumbling seems to be common style. The purpose in this personal observation is to relate to spiritual communication and listening as Scripture refers to it. Why do our spiritual ears not hear the messages of God? I believe it is because we have trouble with the hearing aids of our faith lives – as I do in my mortality. Scripture makes clear that God speaks to us: 1) in nature, most easily perceived in weather and earth functioning; 2) in Scripture, most easily managed in reading and teaching; 3) in conscience, most easily heard in prayer and practice; and, 4) in experience, most easily deciphered in thought meditation about our participation in life’s circumstances and relationships. More than this would meet with considerably more doubt and resistance than we receive in working through some of the mysteries of God with the forms he gives us. God cannot give more without protest against the imposition of miracle. Inescapably there are aspects of miracle even in natural life.
Nature has been important to us, implied strongly in Scripture, and verified in our experience. What has nature to say about the presence of an intelligent being at work in the world’s system, a system that is not referred to in the investigations researchers have made relative to the universe? Nature has responded to mankind, according to Scripture, as by sending rain or withholding it. Can we discern God’s approval or disapproval in the responses of nature to our prayers? Adam did, Noah did, Jonah did, and the disciples did on several occasions with Jesus. Periodically in history there were concentrated periods when the health of populations has been changed for good or ill and have been identified with God’s grace.
Scripture has been the major source for God’s communication with us. Its permanent record requiring only an affirmative or negative response in mind and action has achieved the most dramatic effect of all forms of written communication for all time. Nothing comes close to it. Nothing has been more lasting from ancient times. Nothing has given so much hope and relief and warning to mankind in written genre. Conscience is ever with us. We do sense right and wrong until we develop a callous life that can override our own values. Even an innocent child slinks away from parents in some violation. It is a development that starts early and grows, cultivated in excuses. (Clyde Barrow, of Bonnie and Clyde fame, turned to utter depravity after being raped in jail. He would get even. He ultimately murdered the man who raped him.) Experience rightly evaluated forces us to decide between rising to the call of God to love and righteousness or to decline to the end of mortality. The message is clear enough. God has not left us without recourse whether it is lost hearing acuity or other acts of nature that challenge human decline. I have learned that life silences have assisted me in prayer, and attention to serious life formation. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020