By Rae Lynn DeAngelis

One year to celebrate my birthday, my family and friends took me to a Christian concert featuring two of my favorite Christian bands—Casting Crowns and Sanctus Real.

It was a blessing to experience God’s love through their passionate music; however, towards the end of the concert, I was struggling with my hearing. I’m not sure if the decibels had significantly increased throughout the evening or my aging ears had had enough, but the music started to became all jumbled in my head. As hard as I tried, I just couldn’t make out the words of the songs.

Taking a rest from the confusing notes and lyrics, I cupped my hands over my ears and the most amazing thing happened—I could hear every word perfectly.

Apparently, the instruments had become so loud they were drowning out the vocalists. In my opinion, the message within a song is the most important part, so even though I received some uncomfortable stares from those around me, I held my hands over my ears the remainder of the concert.

Do you ever go through life and feel like you’re somehow missing the most important part? Sometimes our lives are filled with so much reverberation we lose focus on what’s most important. Days become so jam packed with to-do’s that we forget to simply be. We rush from one thing to the next and barely have time to breathe.

“I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.” (Job 3:26)

In this day and age, everyday tasks can be accomplished in record time. With all the modern conveniences you would think we’d have more time to enjoy life.

But do we?

“Be still before the LORD, all mankind, because he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.” (Zechariah 2:13)

“[Jesus] got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.” (Mark 4:39)

When chaos abounds, Jesus is there to help us filter out the resounding confusion of our lives so we can focus on what’s really important.