Lessons from a hearing aid

As I was preparing to leave for Cambodia on a mission, I noticed that the the ear piece on my right hearing aid was beginning to break off from the body of the hearing aid. So I decided to make an appointment with my audiologist to get it repaired. I decided that while I was there I would mention that I was having a difficult time hearing , in fact I could hear just about as well without the hearing aids as I could with them – which is not very well.

He had one appointment available before I left and so I took it. When I got there he quickly fixed the breaking ear piece. When I told him about not being able to hear very well, he took one of the hearing aids and examined it with his lighted magnifying device. After a minute he took a small brush and started swiping it across the hearing aid. He then checked it again and then cleaned it some more. Finally he went to another place on the hearing aid and did the same again.

He then repeated the whole process on the other hearing aid.  He then showed me what he had done. Each device has two tiny microphones that collect the sound for the hearing aid to amplify and send to the ear for me to hear.  Over the years they had gotten dirty and he had cleaned the dust off of them so that they could work properly.

When I put them back into my ears, I could actually hear again. 

He then showed me how to clean the microphones and how to do several other things about I could do to make sure that the hearing aids would keep functioning properly – including making sure I had some extra ear pieces in case one broke again.

As I thought about that experience and talked to our daughter about it, I learned something about our communication with God.  He wants to always communicate with us. But sometimes we can’t hear what He is saying.

Occasionally that is because something breaks and we need help repairing it. More often it is just something that needs to be cleaned up.  In either case when we go to God (the expert) for help and not just friends and other people, He will help us fix what is broken or teach us how to clean up whatever is causing the interference.  The results may not always  come as quickly as they did with my hearing aid, but they do come.

It seems counter intuitive that we should as ask God to help us take care of whatever we need to do when it seems like He is not speaking to us, but that is only way that works.