Quiet Place

Do you have a quiet place?
It seems to me that it is very difficult to find a place that is quiet. Life has so many voices. There are people voices, appliance voices, animal voices, media voices, and street voices all calling to me and intruding on the voices that are already screaming in my head.
I try to find quiet pieces of time here and there when I can quiet my heart and mind before God. Sometimes that is not enough, especially when those voices of life become like a steamroller headed straight for me! 
At times it seems the only way I can truly find a quiet place is to get away for a little while. (To move out of the way of the steam roller if you will.) The other night I did just that. I drove out to the edge of town and watched as the sun set in a pool of pink and red and orange. I watched as row after row of grapevines became gnarly, tangled, silhouettes against these desert colored sky. In the distance a line of black, tall, palm trees looked like a picture post card from some tropical paradise.
I watched and waited as the stars began to peek out of the growing blackness. The smell of dust, drying grasses, and hay bales filled my nostrils.
The mosquitoes buzzed my ears and face, occasionally tasting my sweaty skin as I leaned against my hot car. Even though the sun had long since set I could still feel the waves of heat coming up off the ground.
From my vantage point could see the oncoming headlights of the traffic on the Ridge Route like a string of diamonds twinkling on a piece of black velvet. I listened as an occasional owl screeched through the black night and occasionally farm dogs barked from the distance.
As I walked back and forth stirring up the chalk like dust and covering my feet in the gray powder, I prayed and cried out to God. What I had been looking for and what I found was stillness. I had found that much needed 'quiet place' where the voice of God could be heard above and not drowned out by every other thing that demanded my attention.
For a moment as I looked up into the night sky time seemed to stand still. For a moment I was able to be still and know the He is God.
"Duties do not clash any more than do the stars...if we are inwardly quiet we shall see the purposed sequence and take them one by one. An angel is never sent on more than more than one errand at a time." Amy Carmichael
Blessings,