Noisy Distractions

I am annoyed this morning.  This is the first Saturday morning which has been almost warm enough to sit on our front porch to think and write.  Spring is only one week old.  Thousands of birds of a great multitude of species native to our area are raising their voices in search of or celebrating the finding of their seasonal soul mate.  The blooming trees are blooming as the rest of the deciduous trees are bursting their buds to collect the sun.  My home life is based in the middle of a wonderful display of nature.  Except for my daughter’s home next door, we see no other dwellings or even signs of inhabitants.

However, that is by sight only!   Herein lays my “annoyingness.”  As is happening all around Nashville there is a steady in-flow of squatters.  I don’t blame them, it a great place to live.  When we moved into our home, squatted, twenty plus years ago along with the beauty of nature there was the quiet.  Today there is an almost constant flow of vehicles passing by out of sight but not out of sound.  I can’t see them, nor can they see me.  They don’t know I’m here but I know they are passing by.  This day there is also the transportation rushing sound of the larger highway further away. 

When I sit here restless of spirit, I am finding it difficult to concentrate with all the noise (Here comes one of those racing motorcycles winding out tight between gears. There he goes.) hiding the voices of the birds.  So here is my point of annoyance, the birds are completely undistracted by human mobility noise pollution.  Why do I let that noise distract me?   Why don’t I filter out the ambient mechanical noise and just hear the birds and track my thoughts?

As normal, my problem is not out there, it’s in here.  (Now a driver is practicing his skills and testing his car at the oval race track two miles away.) 

Is it not amazing how easily eternal things are difficult to ponder by the temporal things darting about us.  What amazes me the most is that even though I am easily distracted by the people noise the Holy Spirit still gets through to me.  I may be annoyed but God is not.  I may be distracted but again God is not.  He hears me above all my self-generated noise.  That is a wonder to behold.

Photo – Mine. Dragonfly on a pond behind my house