Every Sunday morning for the four years I was in college at Harding, I got up about 7am, got dressed, and drove an hour and a half to Formosa, Arkansas, where I preached for the Church of Christ there.
Every Sunday morning for four years, at 7am, my radio alarm would go off to wake me up. No buzzer, no rock station. In Searcy, every Sunday morning at 7am the local religious program would begin with a hymn as its program opening.
So every Sunday morning for four years at 7am, I awoke to the following words:
In the hush of early morning, /When the breeze is whisp’ring low,
There’s a voice that gently calls me,/And its accent well I know!
Here I am, O Savior, waiting; For Thy Will alone is mine,
This is all my crown and glory,/I am Thine and only Thine.
Every Sunday morning for forty years now, if it is a quiet Sunday morning, that is, no phone call wakes me, no children crying, no illness requires immediate attention, if it is a quiet Sunday morning, I wake with these words and that soft melody in my head.
Actually, it’s embedded even deeper, because often, when it is not Sunday, and I get up early to walk, if it is still quiet in our neighborhood, those words come first to mind—sometimes I even sing as I walk.
In a time when even our worship together on Sunday seems to need to be loud and the goal seems to be to pump us up into a holy frenzy, in a time when most of those who aren’t going to church I meet walking are plugged into something that drowns out the quiet, let’s be careful that with all of our self-created noise, we don’t drown out the voice that gently calls us.
Starting Sunday, the Lord’s Day, with quiet surrender: “Here I am, O Savior, waiting; For Thy Will alone is mine”
. . . well, I think I’ll quit talking now and just be quiet for a while longer.
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