The Piano Tuner's Apprentice

In 2019, Marcus Chen started his apprenticeship at a piano restoration shop on West 57th Street in Manhattan. His mentor, a seventy-year-old tuner named Gerald, would strike a chord and pause. "Hear that?" Gerald would ask. Marcus heard nothing wrong. The notes sounded perfectly fine. Gerald would shake his head gently and adjust a pin by a fraction of a millimeter. "Now listen again."

For weeks, Marcus felt like a fraud. Every piano sounded the same to him — bright and clear. Gerald never lost patience. He would simply say, "You are hearing it. You just don't know what you're hearing yet."

Then one Tuesday morning, Marcus struck an A-sharp and something snagged in his ear — a faint wobble, a beating between two frequencies that should have been one. He looked up at Gerald. The old man smiled. "Now you know what you've been listening for."

This is the story of 1 Samuel 3. Young Samuel hears something in the night — a voice calling his name — but he does not recognize what he is hearing. Three times he runs to Eli, certain the old priest must be calling him. It takes Eli, a flawed but experienced mentor, to help Samuel identify the voice that had been speaking all along. "Go lie down," Eli tells him, "and if He calls you, say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'"

Sometimes God's voice is already reaching us. We simply need someone further along in the faith to help us recognize what we are hearing — and to teach us how to respond.