Lent - Let’s Be Quiet
/“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
John 10:27
Before the automation of refrigeration, families kept food cold in icehouses. These structures had no windows, often partially underground, with tight-fitting doors, where ice could be stored for months. As such, big blocks of ice were collected in the winter months and covered in sawdust so the ice would last through the summer.
There’s an old story of a father working in his family’s icehouse to prepare it for summer. After bringing in blocks of ice and distributing sawdust, he realized his prized watch had fallen off somewhere in the icehouse. He searched and searched but ultimately gave up looking. Knowing how much this watch meant to her father, his young daughter decided to sneak into the icehouse to look for the watch herself. After just a short time, she emerged from the icehouse with the watch and presented it to her grateful and astonished father. Of course, he wanted to know where it had been found and how she had managed to find it. She said, “I went into the icehouse, closed the door, lay down in the sawdust, and was very still - and I listened. Very quickly, I could hear the watch ticking.”
Lent begins this week with Ash Wednesday. Christians acknowledge and celebrate forty days of reflection, prayer, fasting, and serving others. We do this in preparation for the beautiful season of Easter. An integral part of Lent is a call for quiet, stillness, and reflective time with the Lord. Calling ourselves to be still and quiet in this noisy world is a challenge. Lent is a time to cease searching for the external gratifications this world offers, like material success and fulfillment. May we be able to settle in to be quiet and listen for God’s voice, even in a whisper, to direct our lives and hearts.
The noise of our lives comes at us from every direction. We have noisy television, radios, social media, email…all the media sources. But the noise also comes from all the “things” that require attention from us each day - family, friends, co-workers. We know our God is in all these things, but Lent is a time to take a step back and re-order.
Lent calls us to a quiet place to order the priorities in our lives. Perhaps it’s an extra minute or two of prayer before going in to work. Maybe you find time to experience the natural sounds of a quiet walk in the woods. You see, we need to close the door, lay it all down, and be quiet to hear the soft voice of God, ticking…waiting for us to find Him. He’s calling us to return, calling us to faithfulness, calling us back home to Him. There is no greater treasure.
I hope to embrace this Lenten season as a time to seek God’s voice in my life and turn off worldly noise that makes no eternal difference in my life.
Tammy