Say What?

By Steph Prichard –

Mumble, mumble, mumble.

“W-h-a-a-t?” I clicked Save and trudged from my bedroom office to the top of the stairs. “Did you say something?”

Mumble, mumble, mumble.

I trekked down the stairs, through the living room, and into my husband’s dining-room-converted-into-an-office. “What’d you say?”

He answered. I answered. Back upstairs to my computer.

Mumble, mumble, mumble.

“Wha-a-a-t?”

Mumble, mumble, mumble.

Uh-huh, you guessed it—back downstairs again. Grace ebbed with each step until, on my fourth trip, I suggested what clearly was more than a recommendation. “From now on, how about if we have the rule that we meet at the stairs to talk?”

Agreement. An hour passed, then mumble, mumble, mumble.

I stomped out of my room. What part of “meet at the stairs” did the man not understand? “Wha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-t,” I yelled, my protracted vowel definitely not coated with shugah.

Oh my. At the bottom of the stairs, already waiting, stood my husband. My jaw dropped, and heat pinched my cheeks as he grinned up at me. “Maybe we need the rule,” he said, “that we see the whites of each other’s eyes before we talk.”

Or, face it, I needed a hearing aid.

“Why wait until you’re old and gnarled to hear better?” a friend asked. Why indeed? I was missing out on half the content of conversations directed to me. As if listening to a skipping tape recorder, I had to piece words together to catch the gist of what was said. Worse, my daughter spoke softly—I heard maybe twenty percent of what she said—and she allowed me only two whats. And then there were my friends who teased me by muttering juicy tidbits just loud enough that I couldn’t quite catch what they said. Meanies.

Why put up with this? I bought a hearing aid for each ear, and, yessssss, finally, I could hear!

Reminds me of how we need spiritual hearing aids too. Before I became a Christian, I read the Bible … and thought it horrid. I listened to sermons … and the words went in one ear and zipped out the other. Scripture by itself, whether read or listened to, is not a hearing aid to God’s Truth. First Corinthians 2:14 says, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” Yep, nailed me!

Once we are Christians, however, the Holy Spirit opens our ears to hear and our minds to understand the Truth that God reveals in Scripture. That’s when we can meet with Him at the stairs and talk. “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord.” Oh yeah, that’s an invitation I don’t want to miss out on!