"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."

What does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?
Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
Ecclesiastes 1:1-4
 

It’s noisy outside today. The press of humanity makes it so.
Loud cars
Loud music
Loud voices
Loud people

I yearn for a quieter dawning.

Wind Whistling,
Whispering,
on its way through valley and forest: Its melody rising to meet the harmony that man grasps hard to reach but
never achieves.

I relish the remembered sound of cold snow crunching underfoot; of ice creaking as it claims dominance
over fast-flowing streams.

Or the lone call of the crow, lifting its wings to depart a nighttime roost in the early morning, taking flight on the
wings of the wind, searching out sustenance to energize another day’s requirements.

Sounds in my mind, drowned by the Noise of Progress; Evolution; Development; Life.

Moving forward, sometimes it seems we only regress and so become more desperate to find our
essential qualities in the abundance of senselessness.

It’s noisy outside today.
I want to hear the whisper,
The soft murmur of life gently singing in the stream of eternity,
But the clamor obscures life’s sweet melody.

Where is the insulation? Where is the protection from the confusing din?

What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? All things are wearisome, more
than one can say.

And then, a still, small Voice.

So it was, when he heard it, that he went out and stood. And a voice came to him, and said, "What are you
doing here? Go, return to the Wilderness; (the Wild-er-ness) and when you arrive, anoint..... 1 Kings 19:11-13

Life is seldom what we’d like it to be. Our minds paint wonderful portraits of the way we would position all the components of our masterpieces, were we God.

But we are not God. We are merely mortal; fragile; temporal; impermanent beings with perpetual souls.

And so we are cast into life’s flow without our permission,
Or asking,
Or liking.

Performers on a stage, we live out our destinies in full view of eternity, asked merely to answer the call of
our duty.

To return from our complaints into the Wilderness of life
And to anoint: To pour out oil; to bless; to bring the lubricant of God’s grace into lives devoid of goodness
and mercy and truth.

Someone we will meet today, in the midst of the noise, is in need of that anointing, that lubrication.
A broken heart,
A broken family,
A broken dream,
A broken marriage,
A broken image,
A broken life waits for anointing to bring healing.

And we are called today to carry God’s grace, in the midst of the annoying sounds of life, on a mission in the
midst of the noise.

In His Grace,

Greg