The Roar of the Beast

Whenever I travel, which I do more in this season of my life, I hear him out there roaring.  I do not hear sounds of his presence at the farm.  There are other sounds where the hay silently grows.  Most of the sounds of the farm are heard only by those who have cultivated the art of listening.  Of course, the first is the stillness of silence which is really no silence at all for it is filled with sounds of the Creation as it moves from one moment to the next.  Wings flapping, limbs falling, and squirrels scampering on the ground are just a few examples of the sounds midst the silence.   

Being one who has grown accustomed to such sounds, I can never get used to the roaring sound of what I call the Beast.  His roar comes from the throat of highways and expressways where people are always hurrying to pass from where they were to where they are going.  It is a constant roar in those places near those strips of asphalt and sometimes, as in the case of this night, I wake up to the roar outside a strange window which overlooks his domain.  As one awakened by the roar of his presence, I wonder where all the people are going.  

When I was in college, we used to sing a folk song entitled, "I Know Where I'm Going."  I wonder if those folks out there know.  I wonder sometimes if I know.  While the roar I hear comes from people with a sure destination in mind, I still wonder if they know they are hurrying toward a hole in the ground, or so another song suggests with its lyrics. I have been reminded recently of something I have known for a long time which is that we are created for the purpose of glorifying God.  Maybe not everyone agrees, but then, such denial is part of the problem.  We end up hurrying toward our own pursuits and end up without a mindfulness of who we are and why we are here.