Stillness and Noise

by Sarah Eshleman on October 1, 2020

Featured in Answers Magazine

Audio Version

Recently, at a local nature preserve, I settled at a table with my journal. All too soon I realized that to hear myself think, I would have to escape the cicadas and mockingbirds. Nature has a lot to say.

Last summer, amid the ancient redwood trees in California’s Muir Woods, I was startled by a heavy stillness insulating every other sound. I could hear my friend breathing, detected every pebble that crunched beneath my steps. But nothing else—no roar of industry or commute, no bird calls or squirrel chatters.

In both silence and noise, nature proclaims God’s wisdom and majesty, filling me with awe for our Creator.

“Ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you. . . . Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?” Job 12:7–9