The Frequency She Learned to Hear

In 2019, a first-year medical student named Priya Chandrasekaran sat in a cardiology lab at Johns Hopkins, stethoscope pressed to a patient's chest, hearing nothing but a muffled thump. Her attending physician, Dr. Wallen, leaned over and said, "Listen again. There's a murmur between the beats — a whooshing sound, very faint." Priya heard nothing. She tried again. Nothing. On the third attempt, Dr. Wallen placed his hand on hers and repositioned the stethoscope just slightly. "Now," he said. And suddenly she heard it — a soft, rushing whisper that had been there the whole time, hidden beneath the obvious rhythm.

Priya later told an interviewer that the murmur hadn't changed. Her ears hadn't changed. What changed was that someone who already knew the sound helped her recognize what she was hearing.

This is exactly what happens in the dim lamplight of the tabernacle. Three times the voice of the Almighty calls out to young Samuel, and three times the boy runs to Eli, because he has never heard God speak before. He doesn't lack hearing — he lacks recognition. It takes Eli, the weathered old priest, to say the ancient equivalent of "reposition your stethoscope": "If He calls you again, say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'"

God's voice was never absent. Samuel simply needed someone to teach him what it sounded like. And so do we.