…a time to be silent… Ecclesiastes 3:7
Noisy…
Never, I think, have I heard the birds make so much noise.
Birds are usually background sound in our neighborhood…
Drowned out by the hum of the nearby highway…
The buzz of planes aiming for the airport…
The growl of multiple lawnmowers decapitating the grass…
Today the birds sing so loudly they cover every other sound.
Wait.
That’s not true.
Today the birds seem loud because…
Everything else is quiet.
Not one airplane flies overhead…
The highway hum is muted…
Even the wind is silent…
In the quiet, I hear…
The nearby cry of the birds …
The far distant growl of just one lawnmower…
The “thunk” of a far-away car door…
Sounds that normally blend together…
Creating a curtain of noise…
Deafening me to so much beauty…
The variety of the birds’ song…
The faint, far distant sounds from places I cannot even see…
And I wonder…
To what does the noise of my own life deafen me?
How often does the noise of my own life drown out the whispers of God?
What can I do to hear them?
Maybe I need to call out to God…
Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known. Jeremiah 33:3
Maybe I need to seek Him…
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Matthew 7:7
But that can’t be all, I think.
There must be more…
Suddenly I notice the birds are hard to hear again…
Drowned out…
By the noise of planes returning to the skies overhead…
By the growl of many lawnmowers moving across the lawns…
By the hum of the wheels on the nearby highway.
A rare, short moment of quiet has come and gone.
How like the rare moments of spiritual quiet…
When I see God in the beauty of His world…
When I hear God in the beauty of the words He leaves for us in the Bible…
How do I find those moments?
How do I live in them?
Maybe I need to find a time to be silent …
Maybe I just need to be still…
“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” Psalm 46:10
