Created to Listen

The morning’s worship was led by a young couple, the husband leading and playing guitar, and his wife singing backup, playing the keyboard.  I sat behind the sound mixer, listening, just two voices and two instruments to blend and balance.  Taking a few moments to focus on each one, I tried to judge its level in the midst of the others.  It needed to sound perfect, at least to my ear.  The guitar needed a little boost.  

Then it dawned on me in an instant.  To mix sound well, you should be a good listener.  And while it doesn’t always translate to good mixing, I am a good listener.  It isn’t something I have worked to be.  It is just a fact.  It has been my natural preference my entire life.  I can recall sitting among adults as a child, listening to their conversation, with virtually no desire to enter into the discussion.  Listening was what I wanted to do. 

So here I sat, listening, happy as a clam.  I don’t recall being asked to do this task of operating the sound.  It simply became available one day.  The young boy who normally did it went off to college.  I walked into the church building, and sat down in his vacant seat.  At the time, we had a much simpler system.  Only the microphones were amplified.  I cut my teeth on two fader adjustments and a master control knob.  Then one day we upgraded to a larger system.  The mixer is a combination of 130 knobs, 15 slides, 30 buttons, and 30 led lights.  Sitting beside it are digital and cassette recorders, adding more buttons to push at just the right time.  It is a boy’s dream come true. 

Sitting behind that system is a pleasure every week.  I sit next to the person operating a laptop, projecting songs onto a screen, or perhaps a Power Point for the speaker.  That job requires a different set of skills, more visual in nature, usually operated by one of two builders, coincidentally.  One day a friend walked by and said “You brothers are faithful to do this every week”.  It isn’t that way at all.  I don’t do it because I am “faithful”.  I do it because it is fun, and it feels right.

It occurred to me that morning that I do it because I was crafted by God to do it.  He is The One Who made me the listener I am.  He is The One Who made it a pleasure for me to listen.  Which is all good, as I do not play any instrument, yet, and I don't even really sing.  I have a good ear, but an awful nasally voice that I often question God about, so my singing is just … well… noise, and only moderately joyful.  By nature, I love to support others in their work.   So I get to do those things here, sitting quietly in the back.  While obviously it isn’t my only role in this local church gathering, it is the perfect task for me on Sunday mornings.

Listening has served me well throughout my life, not just on Sunday mornings.  You listen in school, and you learn and do well on tests.  You listen to authority figures, you learn what not to do, and you stay out of trouble.  Often people cannot find anyone to listen to them.  You listen to those people, and you become their friend.  The last several years, I have done a lot of work for older people, and find that they especially appreciate an attentive ear.  This sounds completely obvious, but the people for whom I work appreciate someone who will listen to what they want done, and then do it according to their desires.  This is true of not-so-old people as well.

Sometimes, to be a good listener, you need to keep your comments to yourself.  This is difficult for some.  It is not so difficult for me.  Sometimes you actually need to comment.  This I find is more difficult.  We are hand crafted by The Lord.  While not a hard fast rule which I always follow, I was crafted to mostly listen, and to comment if absolutely necessary.  This can be annoying to some.  They should be annoyed with God instead of me.

I was reminded as I listened to this young couple lead beautiful worship that The Lord had brought me to the exact place He wanted me to be at that moment.  I had often recognized what a pleasure running the sound was for me.  And on this morning, I recognized how, at that moment, in a very small and relatively insignificant way, I was right in the middle of God’s will, listening.  And who knows how many other areas I have been placed in to do that one thing… to listen…to listen, sincerely interested, as people pour out their stories, their joys, their concerns, their problems, their needs, and perhaps their heartbreaks.  There was no striving or labor to get to this place.  No pressing The Lord for a ministry.  But as is so often the case when you walk in simple faith, trusting Him to exercise His Grace, it just happened.

 This story first appeared in the February 2010 edition of the Manna. http://readthemanna.org.