Tune Your Ears to God

One day a farmer went into the city. As he was walking down a busy street he suddenly stopped and said to a friend who was with him, ‘I can hear a cricket’. His friend was amazed and asked, ‘How can you hear a cricket in the midst of all this noise?’

‘Because my ears are attuned to his sound,’ the farmer replied. Then he listened even more intently, and following the sound, found the cricket perched on a window ledge. His friend couldn’t get over this. But the farmer showed no surprise. Instead he took a few coins out of his pocket and threw them on the pavement. On hearing the jingle of coins, the people passing by stopped in their tracks.

‘You see what I mean,’ said the farmer. ‘None of those people could hear the sound of the cricket, but all of them could hear the sound of the money. People hear what their ears are attuned to hear, and are deaf to all the rest.’

The point being made here is fairly obvious: We could be tuned in to God if we took a little trouble. Voltaire said: ‘It is natural to admit the existence of God as soon as one opens one’s eyes.’ And Abraham Lincoln said, ‘I can see how it might be possible for the man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.’

When you look at a work of art it is impossible not to think of the artist. To look on the created world and not see the Creator is to be blind to the meaning of the whole of creation and of ourselves. Yet sadly many look and see nothing. They listen and hear nothing. Jesus spoke about God as a merciful and forgiving Father. He spoke about himself as the Son of the Father. And he sent the Holy Spirit to us to help us live as his disciples and children of God. One God, Three Persons – the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity.

All we have to do is to listen to the Holy Spirit who dwells in the heart of the faithful. Through this voice, we will encounter Jesus Christ, the Son of God and of Man, who reveals us the amazing love of God the Father, who unconditionally loves each one of us.

-Fr. John Kim