The Call Hidden in the Canopy

In the summer of 2019, graduate student Maria Chen spent three weeks in Costa Rica's Monteverde Cloud Forest, recording hours of ambient sound for her bioacoustics thesis. Every morning, buried in her headphones, she heard a soft, repeating three-note phrase threading through the dense chatter of insects and howler monkeys. She logged it as background noise and moved on.

When her advisor, Dr. James Whitfield, flew in to review her data, he pressed play on one recording, held up his hand, and froze. "There," he whispered. "That's the bare-necked umbrellabird. We've been trying to document its range shift for five years. You've been hearing it every single morning."

Maria had listened to the call dozens of times. She simply hadn't known whose voice it was.

Young Samuel heard his name called three times in the darkness of the tabernacle and each time ran to Eli, certain the old priest had spoken. It took Eli — imperfect, aging, nearly blind — to recognize what the boy could not: that the Lord Himself was calling. Samuel needed someone further along in faith to say, "The next time you hear it, answer."

God's voice often arrives not as thunder but as a quiet, persistent phrase woven into the ordinary sounds of our lives. The question is whether we have ears — and mentors — to help us finally say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."