It is our first morning in Yogyakarta in Indonesia. I wake up at around 4:30am to the now forgotten but still familiar sound of the call to prayer being boomed into the neighbourhood from the rooftop of ten plus mosques. Not long after as the dawn starts breaking another strange sound claws its way through my sub-conscience. It's a clanging empty noise accompanied by the shouts of a man...
Later the day I see that the centre where we are staying at is surrounded by rice paddies. And it is a ritual for the workers that sleep around the fields to pull a rope connected to empty cans and bellow at the birds that stop by for an early morning breakfast. Every morning during my quiet time I see men and women trudging to their patch of land before doing anything else. It is as if they need to claim their piece of land, their harvest every morning. Making a noise.
Our time in Indonesia we spend with a beautiful student church called Destiny Generation. It is my second visit to this family of believers and again my time is filled with many lessons and revelations on what church could and should look like. And again the simple beauty of devotion stays with me. Every morning we get up for early morning prayer where we sometimes start worshiping before even greeting one another. On my previous visit I stayed with one of my sisters and would wake up to the simple beauty of her and her guitar, devotedly praying and singing with so much passion.
On a Sunday morning the whole body gets up early to meet at strategic places where they spend the time praying for one another, sharing testimonies and worship. It is on a morning like this that I sit on the back of my friend Juan's scooter. The otherwise traffic-laden roads are remarkably quiet and the morning air is fresh as we drive halfway across the city to his campus for prayer. I cannot think of a better way to start my day. Making a noise with family through fellowship.
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, writes David. And as the blessed morning quiet times in Indonesia heap up, both individually and as a team, I realise that the clanging sounds that rise up from the rice fields is a great image of what our lives can look like. As if starting your day by making a noise in the Spirit is the best thing you can do. Bellowing and proclaiming to all that wants to steal from you that day that this is God's piece of land, you belong to a Greater King, this day is going to be full of His peace because the harvest is His.