THE SOUNDS OF THE SEASONS

“Do your hear them?” I asked my wife. “What are you talking about?” she responded as if I were hearing voices in my head. “The cicadas. We don’t have this kind back in Ohio, and, whenever I hear these, they have always made me feel sad.” I explained. In early August we had gone home to Oklahoma for a funeral. We had always called them locusts in the southern vernacular, but they are actually, I believe, a kind of cicada. All I know is that they were the sound of an early August evening when night was approaching, a sound joined by harmonizing katydids. Just like when I was growing up, the sound made me feel sad. I can’t analyze why. Perhaps, it is that the pitch and tone are intrinsically melancholy. Or maybe, as a child that sound was always associated with the end of summer and the beginning of school. As the years have past, I unconsciously began to recognize that nature sings a song of different sounds as the year progresses through its months and seasons. I am no scientist, nor am I even sure that I have identified the sources of the sounds correctly. I have just noticed that, as we proceed through the spring, summer, and into fall, the predominant outdoor cacophony changes. The quiet of deep winter with its rare solo or duet of bird calls disappears with the early spring mating calls of tree frogs. Then comes the mournful sound of the breeding doves. Throughout the summer there is the sound of various insects including the early cicadas and the cheerful singing of birds. In late July and early August the later cicadas and katydids begin warming up and end in a crescendo. In late August and early September the crickets annoyingly commence their endless monotony of chirping. Soon, it will grow silent with frogs buried in mud, insects dead or hidden underneath the bark, and many birds gone south. Sounds do indicate and mark the seasons and the time within the seasons. They tell us where we are chronologically in the year. Eschatological preaching often notes the signs we will see as the end approaches, but what about what we will hear? It is a noisy world. Listening, I believe the sounds indicate just how late in the season of our age it is. There are the annoying, screeching protests against anything righteous and holy and pure. There is the clamoring of false teaching throughout the church world—a sound meant to tickle ears. There is the racket of the partying of those who would eat drink and be merry having only the moment and no hope of the future. There are the cries of discontent, suffering, confusion, and chaos. There are the mumbling of self-declared intellectuals who, professing themselves wise, prove themselves fools with their anti-God, anti-morality rhetoric. Yes, all those sounds mark that it is late in this age and another age is approaching. This is where another sound comes in. It is a sound we do not yet hear but are listening for. It is the sounding of the trump of God. That sound will truly indicate a new season, a new time, a new age. For the believer, there’ll be no melancholy in that sound.

THE SOUNDS OF THE SEASONS

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