HEARING
LESSONS

Topics: Healing; Last Things; Potential; Regeneration; Restoration; Sanctification; Waiting on God

References: Romans 8:18–39; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Philippians 1:6

A little girl in England, Josie Caven, was born profoundly deaf. She often felt isolated as a child because of her inability to hear, but that changed after she received a cochlear implant during the Christmas season. At the age of twelve, she heard clearly for the first time. The first sound she heard was the song “Jingle Bells” coming from the radio.

Was Josie’s hearing restored? Yes—completely. Was she hearing well immediately? Not exactly. Her mother said, “She is having to learn what each new sound is and what it means. She will ask, ‘Was that a door closing?’ and has realized for the first time that the light in her room hums when it is switched on. She even knows what her name sounds like now, because before she could not hear the soft s sound in the middle of the word. Seeing her face light up as she hears everything around her is all I could have wished for this Christmas.”

Josie’s hearing was restored, but that restoration introduced her to the daily adventure of learning to distinguish each new sound in the hearing world. It’s the already and the not yet—a phrase that aptly describes the perspective of believers in Christ who have not yet experienced the fullness of redemption that will one day be realized in heaven.

—“Christmas Carols Music to the Ears of Deaf Girl,” Yorkshireposttoday.com