"Sweetest Sound"

What’s the sweetest sound you ever heard,

Was it your newborn baby’s cry,

Or perhaps she said I love you,

And there’s no more good-bye.

Was it at the symphony,

With hundreds there enthralled,

Or maybe when you got good news,

When the doctor finally called.

The sound of waves upon the shore,

The wind up in the trees,

The singing birds, the eagle’s cry,

May be it’s one of these.

But for me it’s something else,

A long time ‘fore I heard,

Something that was so profound,

Hard to describe with word.

But it’s the sound of silence,

Some think no sound at all,

But they are wrong, it’s God who fills,

The silence with His call.

The silence of an open space,

Desert, sky and reach,

Mountain far or distant range,

The quiet there will teach.

I know that God is everywhere,

His presence we can feel,

But in the quiet stillness,

The sound there is so real.

Louder than your ears can bear,

Deep down in your soul,

From the quiet He says things,

To heal and make you whole.

I love the sound of laughter,

Of music and of love,

All these sounds are gifts to me,

They come from God above.

But the sweetest sound I ever heard,

Was when He called my name,

From the awesome quiet place,

I’ve never been the same.

The silence gets inside you,

And drives out all the noise,

The whisper of the Spirit,

The grace of God employs,

To speak the word I need to hear,

And when I need it most,

But unless the quiet reigns,

I am too engrossed,

In all the noise the world can give,

Distractions mean delays,

Lord, help us find the quiet,

So we can learn Your ways.

“And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper…” (1 Kings 19:12, NLT)

The prophet Elijah was in hiding after his great triumph over the prophets of Baal. He was downcast and discouraged, believing he was the only true believer left. But this was not true. There were thousands yet who loved and obeyed God. What Elijah needed was a fresh word from God. As the Lord passed by, there was a great, destructive windstorm followed by an earthquake and a fire. But the Lord did not speak through any of these. What followed was a “gentle whisper.” And the whisper gave Elijah instructions about what he should do next. Often this is exactly how God speaks to us when we most need to hear. The gentle whisper may not tell us everything, but everything we need to know right now.

Lord, speak Your gentle whisper, in Jesus’ name.

Art by Bruce Greene, brucegreeneart.com. Used by permission. Thanks, Bruce, and God bless you.