Did you ever wonder how our hearing works? What exactly is going on inside of your ear that makes what is being said right now audible to you? It’s an amazingly complex process. First, a speaker has to make sound waves using the vocal chords. Those sound waves travel through the air and hit your ear. The sound travels down the ear canal, and the eardrum starts to vibrate. That causes a chain of little bones to start to move, which knock into the cochlea, and the fluid inside the cochlea starts to move, which gets a response out of the hearing nerve, which transmits the message to the brain.

            Since there are so many different parts, and so much that could go wrong in the process, it is no wonder that many of us have a hard time hearing, and even more remarkable that not more of us do! It’s possible, though, that even if we don’t have trouble hearing, we could very well have a problem listening. Often, when we ask someone, “Did you hear what I said?” we are not asking if the eardrum vibrated so that the little bones whacked the cochlea. We are asking if the words were processed and understood in the way we meant. A failure to communicate is often cited as a major problem in relationships. Frustrated partners will cry to one another, “You never listen to me!”

The judgment on Eli

            In our reading from 1 Samuel, it’s clear that Samuel had no trouble hearing the voice of God calling him; he just had a problem understanding what was going on! We can’t blame him, though. Young Samuel did not have th

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