The Apprentice Who Learned to Hear the Beats

In 1987, a sixteen-year-old named Marcus Chen began apprenticing under piano tuner Walter Kraus in Portland, Oregon. Walter would strike two notes simultaneously and ask, "Do you hear the beats?" Marcus heard only sound — clear, unremarkable sound. Walter shook his head gently and struck the keys again. "Listen deeper. There is a pulse hiding inside the note."

For weeks, Marcus heard nothing. He began to wonder if the old tuner was imagining things. Then one rainy afternoon, bent over the open case of a battered Steinway grand, Walter struck a slightly mistuned fifth. And there it was — a faint, rhythmic wavering buried inside what had seemed like a single clean tone. A pulse. A beating. Once Marcus heard it, he could never unhear it again.

"That," Walter said quietly, "has been there the whole time. You just needed someone to teach you where to listen."

Young Samuel heard a voice three times in the darkness of the tabernacle at Shiloh and mistook it for old Eli calling. The voice of the Almighty was there — present, real, persistent — but Samuel did not yet know how to recognize it. It took Eli, weathered and flawed as he was, to teach him: the next time you hear it, answer. "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."

God is often speaking long before we learn to hear. And sometimes it takes a wise, imperfect guide to teach us how to tune our hearts to the right frequency.