Where Even The Trees Clap Their Hands For Joy

My Oak Creek

I find myself longing for quiet this morning. Do you ever have that feeling? Oh it’s plenty quiet inside and out in our home this early in the morning, but somehow I am not quiet. I’m stirring. Too much going on, I suppose. Once again maybe I’ve tackled way more than I should. So underneath it all there is this stirring of unquiet.

I was offered two readings for this morning by Pray As You Go. First, that famous Psalm:

As a [deer] longs for the running streams,

so I long for you, my God.

I thirst for God, the living God;

when shall I come to appear in his presence? Psalms 42:1-2

We come to those times in our lives where we long for something so much steadier than all the noise we are constantly hearing and stirring up ourselves. We are thirsty for so much more. I too am thirsty this morning.

Naively I had the illusion that when the election was over, perhaps we would calm down for a time, settle into becoming more like one nation again. It’s been more than a bit disillusioning to see us all crank up into the same old patterns of division and hatred and nastiness.

It's not just the world’s noise though. It’s my own noise as well. Is what I’m teaching getting through? Is my to-do list getting done? Have I reached out to others appropriately and adequately. It’s one of those times of stewing about what I may have done badly or what I may have left undone.

I long this morning, as a deer longs, for “running streams.” I think back to the stream I love so much, that cold, fresh water running through those redrock walls of Oak Creek Canyon where I spent so many formative hours in my childhood. Just the thought of it calms me into stillness and quiet. I get the picture how the deer longs for this stillness and peacefulness and restfulness of body and soul that comes on the banks of a precious stream.

I am coming to see that it is through cultivating this kind of stillness that I am better able to hear the quiet voice of God nearby.   

There is another reading I was given this morning. It too is quite familiar:  

As the rain and snow come down from the heavens

and do not return there without watering the earth,

making it produce grain

to give seed for sowing and bread to eat. . . .

I pause. What is this water from the heavens that produces such life-giving nourishment? Yes, it is water, but also, says the Lord,

so is it with my word issuing from my mouth;

it will not return to me empty

without accomplishing my purpose

and succeeding in the task for which I sent it.

Could my peace, my little bit of stillness in the early morning, be a part of that task for which God has intended his words? Well, if you will grow silent and still enough

You will go out with joy

and be led forth in peace.

Before you mountains and hills will break into cries of joy,

and all the trees in the countryside will clap their hands.

Pine trees will grow in place of camel-thorn,

myrtles instead of briars;

all this will be a memorial for the LORD,

a sign that for all time will not be cut off. Isaiah 55:10-13

Be still and know that I am your God. That’s what I am hearing this morning. That’s what I’m learning these days. Oh how I do long to grow this quiet. How I long to shut off the world’s noise and my own noise as well. How I long to grow quiet long enough to listen to the word from the mouth of our Lord. If I can, I will know joy and peace. I will even hear the trees clap their hands in cries of joy. Can I get there? I think I can. Don’t you?