I heard an interesting story on Radio4 today that made me smile. It was actually the funniest thing I have heard in the last 24 hours. Here in the UK we have had a lot of news about two entertainers whose conduct on air has been far from funny. So something to make me smile was a pleasant change!
Apparantly a well known American ventriloquist called Paul Winchell (born in 1922) was offered an opportunity on prime time TV in the USA in the 1950s. However when they tried things out for a test the sound engineer reported a problem. Apparantly the sound on Paul's normal voice was coming through perfectly but there were problems when he made the dummy speak. Was it some kind of problem with microphone technology back in the 50s?
What it turned out to be was that each time it was supposed to be the ventriloquists dummy that was talking the sound engineer moved the directional microphone boom so that it pointed to the dummy's mouth because it was the dummy's lips that were moving! Unbelievable!
It made me think about a time when God called young Samuel in the night. Three times Samuel got up and went to Eli, convinced that it had to be Eli's voice he was hearing. After all that was what he would naturally expect. The fourth time he heard his name called he followed Eli's advice and engaged in coversation with God. Of course Samuel's mistake was understandable as he had no experience of hearing God speak to him before. It was an easier mistake than the sound engineer's!
But it makes me wonder how well might we realise it when God is speaking to us. The sound may appear to be coming from somewhere or someone else, but could it be that God is speaking to me and I fail to recognise it. Or maybe, like the sound engineer, we are failing to get the message simply because we are looking in the wrong place?
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