Noise. It’s everywhere.

I didn’t notice the loud hum of the turbine engine sounding factory across the street from my parents’ place until a few years ago. Perhaps they’ve gotten noisier over time, or perhaps moving south I was looking forward to a reduction in the manmade noise I was accustomed to in Chicago. It could also be that I’ve gotten used to pursuing stillness. It’s not just the factory though. Doing yard work one day a mocking bird seemed to follow me around, all the while making a racket. People who say nature is quiet either can’t hear, or went somewhere bird-less.

Sometimes we can do stuff about the external noise, but there’s also the clamoring of internal worries, fears, doubts … even joys. It’s the to-do list intruding our early morning coffee or steeling away minutes or hours of what could be peaceful slumber. It’s the worry over real or imagined problems. It’s the nagging feeling we forgot something. The obsessive rehearsal of difficult conversations and the millions of ways people could respond and our responses to their responses ad nauseam (am I the only one who does that?).

One way to deal with internal noise is to turn up the external volume. I think that’s why some people can’t deal with not having the TV, radio, or stereo off. Instead of dealing with the realities of our own lives, we’d rather watch the lives of others. It doesn’t even matter if it’s outright fiction or the fiction that passes for “reality TV”. Many times we consume to fill our own emptiness, hoping that the romance novel will fill our lack thereof, or the latest adventure flick will give us a spike of adrenaline rush.

But these are filthy, broken cisterns that cannot truly satisfy. My church has been using Jeremiah 2:13 as a spring board for a series on “Spring Cleaning”. There have been many sermons about various soul cleaning topics (none yet about how to clean the house in less than 2 hours though).

Recently Pastor Keith spoke on the topic of entertainment and technology. He didn’t touch on this topic, but what stuck in my head is that so often we excuse exposure to sinfulness because it’s just watching TV … reading a book etc. In real life, we wouldn’t encourage someone to date 30 people at the same time. In real life, most of us Christ-followers would not proudly proclaim a proclivity for watching porn (hard or soft). But how much of this do we allow in our lives under the guise of “it’s just entertainment”.

That train of thought can be taken to an extreme. For the record, I consume plenty of entertainment. And for the record, I don’t think I evaluate my choices enough. All I’m saying here is, I believe there is a connection between our entertainment choices and the longings of our hearts. Being aware of those connections, it’s not a bad idea to evaluate if those choices are leading us towards loving God and our neighbors or are making us even more self focused.

Here’s where in my own feeble mind this topic of entertainment and stillness converges: We desperately need to cultivate a space to hear from God. Listening to sermons is not a suitable substitute for listening for the still small voice of God … or even His whisper (1 Kings 19:9-13). I’d argue it’s essential to become a part of an exegetical community, but each person bears responsibility to test what is taught (1 Thess 5:21), and to apply the teaching to their own soul (Phil 2:12). Corporate worship times are wonderful opportunities to praise God with others, but they shouldn’t replace personal times of praising the God whom we profess to love and long for so loudly in the collective excitement of a gathering of saints (Psalm 7:17 … etc. for the rest of Psalms!). Even a romp in nature doesn’t guarantee you an encounter with the Almighty.

My encouragement to myself, and you dear imagined reader, is to seek out the One who is worthy of all praise, and who is the Rock upon which our true hope rests. Let us make time and space for Him to speak to our weary souls. Let us pursue Him who is our deepest longing AND flee from those things that would seek to wrongfully fill the void that drives us to Him.

Let us, as the Psalms suggest, take a Selah. A rest. A stop. A deep drink of live giving water from the one true Source.

Psalm 62:5: “Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him.”

Psalm 131:2: “Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.”

Lamentations 3:25-26: “The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him. So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.”

Psalm 46:10: “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”

The pictures here are from Trey Ratcliff, one of my favorite photographers. You can find his work at http://www.stuckincustoms.com. The first picture is of the Shire as depicted in the Lord of the Rings world. It was a place untouched for a long time form the evils of the surrounding world. Gandalf longed to keep it that way. In some ways, I wish we could keep our souls in such a state of innocence as well. But that topic could be at least another thousand words, and should have read this far, I fear I’ve taken enough of your time already.