Put the Cricket to Sleep
Ever wonder why God uses weird objects or sounds to get through to our hearts? Over the last year I have learned that God uses many non conventional methods to get His message across to us; well, to me that is. This message will be no different since the example that I am going to use is a cricket. But I guess when you are deaf to God’s voice or intentionally ignoring Him then He has other option than to use other means of getting our attention. And since He so brilliantly created the human mind, He can use this portion of our body to get His message across.
Growing up in the South I endured many long and hot summer nights. Most of my growing up years was spent in different parts of the South so I had my share of different regional noises that I contended with on a daily basis. Many different animals and creatures filled the air, water and ground and one of them that stuck out in my mind was the cricket. A cricket is a small little creature but it can make a noise that is distinctive yet elusive at the same time.
Whenever we were playing outside and the evening hours rolled around the sound of crickets began to fill the air. Our ears would pick up these sounds and it would set off an internal clock saying that it was close to getting time for dinner or if a rain had just past that it was time for the humidity level to begin to rise higher. The sound of a cricket was a constant around the south and since winter was only a few weeks in length, on average, crickets would shine almost the entire year. At these times the sounds that crickets made did not bother us since we had other things going on to occupy our minds. However, the cricket continued to make his noise even though we were really not paying attention to him. The vibrations that we caused while walking around allowed the cricket to believe that he needed to signal his musical codes to us so that we would know where his presence was located.
In the south and probably other places a cricket can be used for a couple of things, one of them being bait for fishing and the other main thing was to capture them and put them in a jar and watch them for a couple of days. I am not going to mention the many other uses for crickets because of the grossness that some may find in other people’s habits. I remember we used to go down to the local store and buy a whole bunch of crickets, put them in a metal container with holes in it and then take them down to the local pond or lake and use them for bait. Fish loved them and it was almost guaranteed a catch when you used a cricket for bait in a pond. On the other hand there were many nights that I would sit by my bed and watch the activities of the cricket that I had captured that afternoon. It is amazing of what they do when their surroundings were changed and could not jump freely around the grass. I never really thought about having them “tied” up in a jar but I would always release them the next morning however, the night before the captured cricket would let loose on with his music and would not stop for quite a while.
Some nights I would lie awake and listen to the crickets outside. Their music was soothing to listen to and I would find myself trying to count how many different crickets that were outside just by the location of the sounds that they made. I have no idea of how close I came to an actual count but I remember I would not get too high since the next thing I would remember would b mom waking me up an telling me to get dressed for the day. Early mornings was another time that crickets would make their presence known and I could find myself opening the window and listening to them sing for quite some time as well.
Then you have to place the cricket noise into the annoying category when they decide to find their way into the house. There have been countless number of times that we have sat down to eat dinner, read a book or watch television and as soon as the proceedings begin a cricket will fire up his legs and begin his calling for other friendly species. This noise is ok for a while but after a bit the noise begins to creep into your ears and then rattle your brain enough that you have to get up and find that little noise maker. Well, as you can imagine, only because you have done the exact same thing in the past, we have to get up and make total fools of ourselves trying to catch the culprit that is hiding next to the wall or in the corner of the room. We take about five minutes to catch it and then go to the door and place it outside in his natural habitat once again. But how many times do we complete this task and then get settled back down to our business and another cricket starts in with the same musical notes. It is a process that in some places of the world does not stop and can become quite annoying rather quickly. The remembrance of these creatures in the yard and my lost number count of them would sometimes become deafening so that my sleep would be abated.
Ever wonder how many times God has performed this ritual within our lives and how many times we have ignored His voice when He is trying to get our attention? God never begins speaking to our spirit in a loud manner, but it is always in a soft tone which is soothing and gentle. It is always direct, concise and pointed to what is needed for that time and His voice never seems to be in question. Yet many times we have ignored His voice or simply not heard it for reasons that have crowed into our lives. It is a common routine that our lives are jammed with the activities of the day and we continue to have these activities when we arrive home from our day which then translates into a major annoyance factor when God tries to speak to us “when we have a moment”.
How many times have we heard His voice, recognized it but told God to hold on a minute while we complete our task, which could take us some time to complete. What makes us believe that our lives have become so important that we can continue to play in the park with our friends and even though we hear the crickets in the background, we ignore them while we deem what we are doing is more important. It is funny because we know that when the crickets come out and they begin to make their music that it will not be a one night thing or it will not be just for a few hours, “cricket season” lasts for a long time, so why do we continue to believe that God’s voice will fade away into the background in the same way?
God is funny in that He will continue to try and get our attention even though we continue to try and ignore Him. He is like a parent trying to call their child home when they have been gone from the house for some time. When their current methods do not work they try something a bit more drastic or louder, God acts in the same way. The magnitude of noise that a few crickets portray into the night air can seem like there are hundreds of them in one small area; their noises elusive to our ears but effective at the same time. God’s voice will never go away from us even if we have never heard His voice speak to us before it is something that we never forget and we will never ignore either.
God’s soothing voice now becomes like a sounding clang to our spirits, a sound that we know that we should respond to but continue to ignore hoping that whatever God wants with our life goes away. We even change our current thinking and habits believing that He will not speak to us any longer since we have “changed” a little. But His voice continues to rattle our cage and the noise of the bars is so loud until we have no choice but to stop and ask God what He wants.
God then once again begins to speak in His soft and gentle tone to our spirits which only He can after such a hard chase for what seems like forever to us. God only wishes to protect us from as much danger, frustration and hardships that He can but we must stop and listen to His voice when He calls us. Yes, we hear His voice and ignore it every child does this to their parents at some point in their life but we need to understand that our parents, as with God, only wish to make sure that we do things correct as possible the first time around. And if we do not pay attention to things, their voices get a bit louder and a little stern with words but their love for us does not change. I also understand that not every child has the opportunity to have parents that love them, or for some tragic reason they do not have parents any longer, but we all should remember that God is everlasting and that He shall never leave us while we are on this earth.
A quick funny to the closing of these words, I have to admit that God has made it clear that He wanted me to quit procrastinating and get this message done. I have had the topic and all the necessary notes that accompany it ready for a while now but last night as I was lying in bed I was closing my eyes to go to sleep and a cricket began to sing somewhere in our bedroom. We have never had a cricket in our bedroom before, our bedroom is on the second floor which would pose many obstacles for a cricket to get up to that level but there was one there and as soon as he began to sing, I knew exactly what God was telling me to do.
This morning when I went into the office to begin my day a couple of thoughts ran through my mind which had nothing to do with my task at hand, and low and behold a few moments after those thoughts were completed a cricket began to sing loudly in the back corner of my office. Once again God was reminding me of the mission that was needed for me today and the importance of these words to someone in the world for this moment in their lives. It is easier to listen to God from the beginning and now wait for Him to have to get our attention by using His other methods. His soft and gentle voice is good enough for me, or at least I hope that my spiritual ears are in tune enough with His voice to recognize it when He is trying to get my attention. There is nothing wrong with placing God number one in your life, in fact it makes things a whole lot easier for you and the people you call your loved ones.
So if you want the cricket to stop singing, go find him and capture him and place him close to your heart and then place him back into the appropriate place. In the instance of God capture His voice and place it back into the center of your spiritual ears and heart. His voice will guide you and steer you away from many heartaches down the road. He will also give you kind and helpful words to live by and to give to others when they are hurting. Also reflect on the cricket’s sounds that he makes so that you will tune your spiritual ears to the notes that he offers. God loves you and wants to be the center of your world, let Him it will be a good thing J
DLB
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