What are you tuning into?

Two psychiatrists meet at their 20th college reunion. One is vibrant, while the other looks withered and worried.

“So what’s your secret?” the older looking psychiatrist asks. “Listening to other people’s problems every day, all day long, for years on end, has made an old man of me.”

“So,” replies the younger looking one, “who listens?”

With all the noise and bad news in this world, it’s not uncommon that many of us just don’t listen much. But there’s a price to pay for not tuning in, especially relationally.

Respected pastor Charles Swindoll once found himself with too many commitments in too few days. He got nervous and tense about it:

“I was snapping at my wife and our children, choking down my food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected interruptions through the day,” he recalled in his book Stress Fractures. “Before long, things around our home started reflecting the pattern of my hurry-up style. It was becoming unbearable.

“I distinctly remember after supper one evening, the words of our younger daughter, Colleen. She wanted to tell me something important that had happened to her at school that day. She began hurriedly, ‘Daddy, I wanna tell you something and I’ll tell you really fast.’

“Suddenly realizing her frustration, I answered, ‘Honey, you can tell me – and you don’t have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly.’ I’ll never forget her answer: ‘Then listen slowly.'”

Connecting with, and understanding the people and world around us (and God!) requires us to “listen slowly,” or in other words, to “tune in” to others with intention. That’s a message the Bible has long promoted:

“Tune your ears to wisdom, and concentrate on understanding,” Proverbs 2:2.

To “tune your ears” is a physical metaphor for a spiritual posture. In the original language, this carries the idea of inclining or stretching out the ear. It is the image of a person leaning forward, cupping their hand, and silencing their own breathing just to catch a faint whisper. We often treat wisdom as something that should chase us down and interrupt us, but the Bible presents it as something we must actively posture ourselves to receive.

When we tune our ears, we are intentionally filtering out the static of our own opinions and the loud demands of a hurried world. It is an admission of humility. We are saying, “I do not have all the answers, and I am willing to stop talking long enough to hear the Truth.” As the New Living Translation records the full weight of this pursuit in Proverbs 2:1-5, “My child, listen to what I say, and treasure my commands. Tune your ears to wisdom, and concentrate on understanding. Cry out for insight, and ask for understanding. Search for them as you would for silver; seek them like hidden treasures. Then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord, and you will gain knowledge of God.”

While tuning the ear is the entry point, “concentrating on understanding” is the labor that follows. The Hebrew word for understanding refers to the ability to discern or separate – to look at a complex situation and see the heart of the matter. To concentrate on it means more than just a passing thought; it suggests “applying your heart.”

If tuning the ear is about the reception of information, concentrating is about the depth of its residence. It is the difference between hearing a melody and learning how to play the song. When we concentrate on understanding, we aren’t just looking for facts to win an argument; we are looking for the “why” and the “how” behind God’s truth so that it might change our very character.

These two actions — tuning and concentrating — function like the two lenses of a pair of binoculars. If you only tune your ear but never concentrate your heart, you become a person who collects proverbs and verses like trivia but never allows them to navigate your soul. You hear the word, but it never takes root. Conversely, if you try to “understand” without first “tuning your ear” to God’s specific wisdom, you are simply leaning on your own intellect, which leads back to the same stress and “hurry-up style” that leaves the soul withered.

The ear catches the sound, but the heart must provide the home. When we lean in to listen slowly and then refuse to let that truth go until it makes sense of our lives, we find that wisdom isn’t just a concept we study — it becomes the very atmosphere in which we breathe, speak, and relate to those we love.

There is a profound difference between a life spent skimming the surface of conversations and a life spent mining for the gold found in the depths of God’s Word. The treasures Solomon speaks of are not lying out in the open for the casual observer to trip over; they are reserved for the one who treats the voice of God with the same intensity a prospector treats a vein of silver.

Scotty