Noise! Noise! Noise!

This morning I woke up at 4:57a and could not get back to sleep. I had too many things running in my mind from the instant I opened my eyes. I got up, grabbed my slippers, fixed a glass of delicious Nestle’s Quik, and went to let the dog out. The house was quiet. As I opened the sliding door to the back yard, the first thing I heard was the glorious sounds of nature that begins about 4:30 every morning in the woods behind our house. Birds chirping, the occasional deer gnawing on a branch, and squirrels flitting about…it’s like something out of a Disney movie. Unfortunately just behind the noise of nature, I was greeted with a very dull but loud hum. Being that this was the first time I was awake this early and standing outside of our new home in Portage, I didn’t know where the sound was coming from. Later I realized it was the toll road. I withdrew back into the silent house and into our office. With the dog at my feet, I responded to a few emails, filed some papers, and sat down to begin studying for an exam. A few minutes passed and I opened the lid on my laptop, clicked on the media player and began listening to some music. Only a few minutes later I decided that I was too distracted to study, so I went to the bedroom to get ready for the day. Serena woke up. We chatted. The alarm went off. I showered. My PDA beeped with a reminder. I grabbed my stuff and headed to work. I turned the radio on. Made a cell phone call or two. Turned the radio louder. Arrived at work. Chatted with co-workers. Turned on some music in my office. And so it goes….

Why did I just spend the last few minutes of your life sharing this? Because recently I watched a video called “Noise” that talks about how people complain about not hearing the voice of God, and how we have saturated our daily lives with “Noise” (both audibly and visually) so much so that we never give ourselves an opportunity to hear from God. As evidenced in my morning story, a quick evaluation of my daily schedule does not allow long periods of noiseless communication with God. So many times in my life I have been asked, “How do I know that God is speaking to me?” “What does a response from God look like?” “Does God communicate with us, or do we just communicate with Him?” The video gives a great example from the life of the prophet Elijah, when God told him to go up on the mountain because He would speak to Him there. Elijah goes up on the mountain, which is shaken by wind, an earthquake, and a massive fire. But God is not found in any of these. “And after the fire came a gentle whisper.” (1 Kings 19:12) As Pastor Rob points out in the video, some scholars translate the original Hebrew for this passage such that it says that God is found in the sound of sheer silence.

Are we ready to listen? Do we look for God in the winds, earthquakes, and fires? In other words, are we looking for God to reveal Himself to us in big dramatic ways? Or are we bending our ears to Him in places that our isolated and quiet? Luke tells us that, “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” (5:16) Do we seek times of solitude to hear the voice of God? Are we ever in a place that is silent? Why are our lives so full of noise? Do we think what God has to say is more important than what all of the noise has to say?