Tip of My Iceberg

I couldn’t sleep, so I was up early. The house was enveloped in quiet. Calm. I grabbed a blanket and decided to sit on the porch.

The quiet didn’t extend to the outside.

There were no other people awake that I could see. The darkness was warmed by a full moon that wouldn’t be shuttered.

And the birds were singing with passion.

But I couldn’t see them.

Who or what sings like that so early in the morning? Don’t they sleep? Have they nothing else to get done but sing? Wasn’t there a better use of their time?

The dark lingered. There was a pause in the chirping cacophony. So I chose to sit and listen to the quiet. To be still. To wrap myself in my blanket and the dark and try to clear my mind of the “ought to’s”. The daily “to do’s” that crowd into my head like vultures around road kill.

But those dad gum birds began singing. Again. Loudly.

The sun began to rise, and light filtered through the tree I thought was their feathered hiding place. No sign of birds, but plenty of chirping and peeping.

Have you ever felt that annoyance of the silly song playing in your mind that distracts you from focusing on what you want to do? You can’t remember what set it off.  It’s just there. Or when you’re sitting on an airplane, and the young man next to you has his music so loud that you feel like you’re wearing his ear buds?

There are times I seek to distract myself with noise. Often because I don’t want to focus on something requiring my thinking. There are times when I yearn for quiet because my head is so full of noise that it feels like a balloon blown up too much, waiting to pop.

What do I really want to hear? Why do I always complain about the noisiness of life?

If I’m honest, I want to hear that I’m an OK person. That I’m good enough. That I’m known and accepted for who I am.

I often fill my head with noise to keep out the lies that play like old tapes in my mind. That I’ll never be enough, no matter how hard I try.

Just like the birds filling the early morning with their songs, I fill my mind with the things I think I should think about. In the process, I often forget about the one Voice I should listen to.

“So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.’”                     Hebrews 3:15

God is always speaking. The world cries out with His words–in all that He’s made, in all that He’s said in His Bible, in the miracle of life itself.

I don’t always listen.

I want to have ears tuned to what He’s saying. About me. About life. About hope. About what’s to come. He wants to talk with me. Not at me. And I don’t want to ignore Him.

Like I want to ignore the birds.

What He has to say is more significant than anything else I could listen to.

Who are you listening to?

First photo courtesy of news.nationalgeographic.com.