Background Noise

There is a certain noisiness to life.

Externally, a cacophony of sounds assault you from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep. A gentle hum or a deafening roar, it is never ending. Internally, it can be deafening at times. The loudness of your head, thoughts falling over one another, jostling for prime position, for your undivided attention. Problems, fears, questions, essays, tasks, situations... background noise which at times seems louder than your own voice. It is a train of thought, always on a journey from one place to the next, draining your emotional energy and never giving you peace.

You search for silence, or at least the sound of something more acceptable. You try to block out this background noise, marred by confusion and uncertainty, by listening to music turned up too loud, by engaging in conversation and concentrating so hard that your head begins to hurt. But it never really goes away. It is always there, in the back of your mind, waiting to pounce when your concentration lapses.

But then... can you hear it? Straining through the noise, the turmoil, the overwhelming sounds, there is a melody. The notes are sweet, they are pure, so simple and yet inexplicably joyful. Your heart leaps in your chest - it is the song you have been trying to learn, the sound you have been straining to hear your whole life.

You turn your ear to it - it's getting louder now, surpassing the other noises that have been jostling for place at the back of your mind for so long. Those noises of discontent, of inferiority, of worthlessness and insecurity. Those noises of the problems you can't solve, the questions you can't answer, the situations you cannot change. The noises of your helplessness and your fear, the sound of your confusion and the wails of your desperation.

This melody, it grows ever stronger. It is the song of the One who knows you, who sees you and loves you just the same. He longs for you to listen closer to the song He sings over you, night and day. A song of his faithfulness, of his love for you. It is the song you have been longing to hear your entire life. All those songs you have listened to, searching for the one which speaks straight to your heart, into your very soul - this is it. This is what you have been yearning for - that thing for which you have been looking in all that the world has to offer, that thing you cannot name, cannot describe, it is here.

Breaking through the noise of years gone by, the lies you've believed and the fear you have battled, the voices that have drowned out what you've been longing to hear. This is it.

Can you hear it? The melody of your creator, your Father, of your very self. It comes, wafting through the background noise, and becomes the overarching refrain. It soothes your troubled soul and teaches your heart how to dance once again. It drowns out everything else, all else fades away, and your mind is stripped bare as the music fills your very being.

Can you hear it? A voice, it is singing. Words you cannot translate, that you do not understand and yet know they are soaked in joy and love. They are words like none you have heard before. They are the song of your heart, being sung back to you, the melody you had forgotten, that had been surpassed by all the other sounds this world has to offer.

Here it is. Can you hear it? Let it wash over you. Soak in it. Live in its melody. Dance to it once again. Rest in it. Laugh in it. Be loved in it. For that is its purpose - it completes and overwhelms and satisfies and soothes you. The song of the One who loves you, he rejoices over you with singing, with a melody the beauty of which is unsurpassable and inexplicable.

Can you hear it? Listen to it, for it is the song of a Father to his beloved child, the song with which he rejoices over you, speaks to peace to your soul and joy to your heart. The song with which he saves you, restores you, redeems you and makes you whole. This is it.

Listen... Can you hear it?

 

"The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing." - Zephaniah 3:17