Before summer is over, I hope you can go someplace where all you can hear are the crickets. I’m not talking about crawling around in your bedroom closet to exterminate the one cricket that’s keeping you awake. I’m talking about going far enough away where engines aren’t revving, no sirens force you to face hard realities, and no gunfire pierces the heart of your personal safety. I’m talking about going to a wide-open space at dusk when the crickets collaborate to make the sound of peace and quiet. Take a companion with you and say, “Shh, do you hear that?” And when your companion says, “I don’t hear anything,” you say, “Exactly.”

All of the noise in our lives, all of the sonic disturbances around us, are reminders that we’re not there yet. We are not in that place Jesus is preparing for us. We don’t yet have our room in our Father’s mansion, but we are on our way. Someday we will enjoy the full-throated righteousness Jesus won for us when he could barely whisper from the cross, “It is finished.” Let the crickets give you a hint that it will be amazing because of what you no longer hear once you are there. “The fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever. My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest” (Isaiah 32:17,18).