“My dear friends, today I wish to share with you a special invitation. There are a few wonderful occasions in the scriptures when our Heavenly Father personally introduced His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, with a specific charge to ‘Hear Him!’
Today, this most-important invitation from our loving Heavenly Father to listen to the voice of the Lord and to follow His teachings is extended to us.
In this special year as we commemorate the 200th anniversary of the First Vision, I invite you to think deeply and often about this key question: How do you hear Him?”
President Russell M. Nelson,” Invitation from the Prophet: ‘Hear Him!'”, February 2020
We have been given an amazing gift, the gift of the sense of sound. But does that mean only listening to sound waves that enter our ear canals?
We listen to sounds from all around us. We listen to sounds that makes us happy, make us sad, surprise us, scare us, inspire us, make us think, give us strength, or even strengthen our weaknesses if we let them (or is that weaken our strengths?).
So…what if we lost that sense of sound?
Listening is the external collection of sound waves that enter our brains through our ear canals. Hearing, on the other hand, is so much more than mere listening. To hear is not just about collecting sound waves. To hear is to internalize, pay attention to, and give heed to those messages. Ponder them. Even compare them to our own perceptions and character. Then, act accordingly. Messages can come from sound waves, but they can also be internalized in other ways. We can hear by listening, by watching, by reading, by feeling. There are 5 senses (that we mortals know of) and we can hear, or pay attention to what is going on around us with all 5, even smelling. So, even if deaf, a person can still Hear Him.
When He speaks, do we just listen? In one ear, out the other, as they say? Or do we receive and internalize what He’s saying? Do we use all senses to pay attention to Him? Do we use the Holy Ghost to “hear”? He is telling us how to build ourselves. Do we act accordingly?