Juliette, Katrina and I went to see an ancient Redwood forest the other day. These are some of the largest living trees in the world! They live for over 2,000 years and grow to over 300 feet(100mt)!
We stood before a crosscut of a huge tree and looked at the tree rings. The park staff had marked off major events in human history with the tree rings on that big old tree. This tree was alive when Greece was still a dominant power and Rome was just getting started as an empire! Its rings marked off the years of its existence. We could see many years of abundant rains and many years of drought. Some trees in that forest were burned in forest fires centuries before. Some had been burned out from the inside yet still lived on. They truly were a testament to God's creative power.
But this particular tree was already 250 years old when Christ was born! It was so awesome to think of that tree in the forest standing there at the same time that our savior came into the world. These time frames are a small thing for God. Redwoods actually sprout new trees out of the roots of the parent tree. So you can see how a parent tree had 4-5 "babies" then died out. Those babies lived another 2,000 years and so on. You can see up to four generations of trees in a small area. So the root structures of these trees can be up to 10,000 years old!!
But as I stood in that forest, I was struck by an interesting experience. I stood still, alone for a while and seemed to hear absolutely nothing. Surrounded by the soft green and dark red of the trees, I was struck by that moment of silence. It was a POWERFUL silence! These ancient living things were around, quietly, long before I was born and will be around long after I’m gone. I marveled and wondered at the secrets they hold.
As I stood there, I thought again of my dad and his silent strength. Maybe one of the biggest keys to a long and joy filled life is to live it with a humble and contrite heart. Quieting our soul is the first step to really tuning into Gods purpose for our lives.
The one who enters a room thinking he has the most important things to say, will be the one who learns the least. We have been given two ears and only one mouth. That was no accident of God. He wants us to learn from that anatomical fact. A truly frustrated person is one who uses his mouth twice as much as his ears. We tend to do that quite often. It’s the truly humble people who stop and really listen to what others have to say.
The Bible says that for God a thousand years is like a day. As I stood in the majestic silence of those incredible living towers, I could sense their quiet power and life. Their strength, in part, is in their stillness. By contrast our super speeded lifestyles seems to shorten life. The noisier, the shorter. Some get so busy they never really live.
My take away from all this is to really just try to quiet my soul and tune into the life God has for me. As a leader, that will mean hearing people out and taking a sincere interest in their well-being. Listening twice as long as we talk will enrich and may lengthen our lives.
In YWAM we talk about having “quiet times” or times alone with God. Mine can end up being “noisy times” where I do most of the talking. Lord help me to pipe down and listen up to what you have to say. May you too learn to really listen to God and to those around you. May your life be filled with the strength of a quiet spirit that breaths in the grace of God and breaths out his praise.
May you claim those first verses of Psalm 23 to be your own. “The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul.”
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