Dear Lord; Happy Friday Father!<\/p>\n
This morning Father, I had what I think is an important realization; my life is noisy.<\/p>\n
Each morning, I\u2019m awakened by an alarm clock which at the same time starts an hour-long process of dogs barking to go out, my smartphone reporting to me all the things that I missed while I slept (or tried to anyways), and the daily rush to get our family moving forward with the day.\u00a0 Then I don the mobile headset for the ride to school and the office, on goes the radio and all the while I\u2019m serenaded by the beeps and blips from the boys\u2019 Nintendo DS\u2019s from the back of the SUV.\u00a0 Once at work, the constant sounds of phones, computers, streaming radio, and a plethora of other office chatter persist throughout the day.\u00a0 The ride home is spent back on the headset along with the radio helping me to drown out the commute noise.\u00a0 Evenings at home are filled with more barking dogs (yes, we have little yappy dogs\u2026 lol), television, phones and other such sounds of modern life.<\/p>\n
As I said\u2026 Noisy.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m beginning to think that the struggle I\u2019ve had with insomnia over the years may be partially related to the amount of constant noise in my day.\u00a0 In the wee hours of the night, I can truly find the Stillness and quiet to properly direct my thoughts and listen to Your Voice.<\/p>\n
Hmmm\u2026 Stillness\u2026 It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve truly had some.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe says, \u201cBe still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.\u201d\u201d \u2013 Psalm 46:10 (NIV)<\/strong><\/p>\n Well Lord, this weekend I\u2019m going to try and focus on that.\u00a0 It\u2019s supposed to be nicer weather the next couple of days here, so I\u2019m planning to try and take advantage of it and visit one of the few places I can almost always get the Stillness I need to hear You; Blackbird State Forest.\u00a0 It\u2019s been months since I\u2019ve been able to go and just walk in Your Splendor, so I\u2019m going to do exactly that.<\/p>\n \u201cYou will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.\u201d \u2013 Isaiah 55:12 (NIV)<\/strong><\/p>\n Amen.<\/p>\n See You soon.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n ~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Lord; Happy Friday Father! This morning Father, I had what I think is an important realization; my life is noisy. Each morning, I\u2019m awakened by an alarm clock which at the same time starts an hour-long process of dogs barking to go out, my smartphone reporting to me all the things that I missed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[560,359,182,915,561,487,4,173,42,536,628,966,444,964,731,669,159,121,963,466,222,682,506,670,846,65,648,25,977,197,813,253,69,571,727,174,117,258,66,777,978,730,430,240,71,135,481,49,138],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-alarm","tag-bible","tag-boys","tag-dear-lord","tag-dogs","tag-earth","tag-family","tag-father","tag-focus","tag-forward","tag-friday","tag-god","tag-happy","tag-happy-friday","tag-head","tag-helping","tag-home","tag-illness","tag-insomnia","tag-isaiah","tag-joy","tag-listen","tag-morning","tag-night","tag-noise","tag-noisy","tag-office","tag-peace","tag-phone","tag-places","tag-planning","tag-psalm","tag-quiet","tag-realization","tag-rest","tag-school","tag-son","tag-song","tag-stillness","tag-struggle","tag-television","tag-thoughts","tag-time","tag-vision","tag-voice","tag-weather","tag-week","tag-weekend","tag-work"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-9P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}