Quiet Morning

My mornings are usually full of sounds.  Usually, the radio is playing, the Weatherman is reporting the forecast and the Newswoman is reporting the latest headlines.  But this morning, I catch a quiet morning.  I listen to the coffee pot dripping, the low whirr of the ceiling fans, and the quiet crackle of the fire in the stove.  The house is quiet for a few minutes and I settle in to listen.

The sound of a household waking up, is a familiar one to many of us.  They may all sound different, but there are the typical wake up sounds of showers, feet on the floor, and doors opening and shutting.  I wonder what it would sound like to listen to a community wake up.  I’m sure there are those daily familiar sounds of cars starting, trash going to the curb, and garage doors opening.  Inside my house, I don’t really hear those things; insulation is a very handy invention. 

I’ve been reading through the Old Testament lately, revisiting the places of Jacob, Moses, and Abraham.  So I find myself wondering this morning, what were the sounds of the people who had fled Egypt – what did the camp sound like waking up?  There were so many of them, estimates around 2 million.  To put that in perspective, it’s a bit under the population of the estimated state population of Iowa.  Without the insulation that lets me sleep late on occasion and also keeps me unaware of those many sounds, I would hear so much more.  In a tent city, as this would have been for this great population, it would have been even noisier.  Babies hungry for an early morning feeding, neighbor dogs barking, the early risers up stirring and preparing for the work of the day, they would have been just a few of the sounds heard every day by these people.  I wonder what they thought as they lay on the edge of sleep and wakefulness, listening to the sounds of waking up.