It gets awful quiet in my house at night. Silence rules once everyone goes to bed. It's one of those things that can be good or bad. There are times when the quiet reminds me of all the noise of the day. I can still hear my son telling me today that my hair is coming in grey...or white. My mind thinks about all of the sounds of being the father of two very different teenagers. Some nights the absence of noise becomes a bittersweet moment. Next year my daughter will be away at college so there will be less of her friends coming by with all of the chaos that follows. This school year is already flying by much too fast. Quiet nights like that are not always pleasant.

We write on quiet times probably too much on here. My preference for this does tend to lead me to express my thoughts on it far too often. I do enjoy the sounds mentioned above. Games being played by my son will get loud but it means that he is home. Volume is a good thing. We do spend a great deal of time at church encouraging people to sing aloud in worship. Our building will be quite loud tomorrow night with all of the students and children doing their thing. It may get a bit hectic at times when that happens but it sure beats hearing crickets chirp. I would much rather have all of the energy that comes with the volume than not have young people enjoying time in God's house.

So we are left with the obvious conclusion that balance is always the key in this matter. The issue to me is that too many people don't know what to do with the quiet. There are even some people who are afraid of silence. It hits at the fear of being alone. Some avoid quiet in drastic ways. One of the ways to be spiritually healthy is knowing that silence can be golden. Those are times when you and God can talk about stuff going on in life. You can learn how to read through scripture with an open heart. Maybe it can be time to ask God to bless other people in your world. We all have down times when we can take charge to do something positive without feeling sad. Who knows? Maybe if we make better use of the quiet then we might have something better to be noisy about?

Bro. Trey