Sounds that Awaken
It is unseasonably warm here in Alabama for February. Temperatures are in the 60’s and 70’s and last night we slept with the window lifted up. Before daylight this morning a chorus of mating frogs and chirping birds coaxed into an early spring began their seasonal symphony. It was a glorious sound to awaken to.
If you have never fallen asleep or been awakened by the sounds of God’s creation, you must put that task atop your list of things to do. The intricacies of nature are all around us. We share the planet with the thumbprints of a Creator who pronounced all that was made – good! The sounds of cardinals or warblers or bluebirds cannot be recreated and they are the best alarm clock I know.
Many of the sounds we hear are getting slimmer by the year as habitat destruction squeezes many species of migratory song birds into oblivion. The number of amphibians is also declining. Gorillas and the big cats may be wiped out of existence in the wild in my lifetime. Have you ever heard a Western Lowland Gorilla or a Venezuelan Tiger scream in the night? It is unforgettable and becoming almost impossible to hear.
These sounds should not only awaken us from sleep but awaken each of us to the reality that we are all custodians of a planet that we share with God’s creation. God lauds the complexity of the animal world in chapters 38-41 of the Book of Job. In God's lecture to Job, God sets forth his passion for every feature of creation. It is one of the most moving and meaningful messages about creation in all of the written language and it came from the Creator!
I have a lot on my mind these days and it is easy to awaken to the challenge of the day with lists of ‘to-do tasks’ swirling about your head. But the sounds of this morning are God’s way of telling me to ‘slow-down’, ‘listen’. There is a divine order to this day if we can become still enough to listen.