No More Whippoorwills

A Devotional Reflection

Scripture Reading:

“Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls…”
—Jeremiah 6:16 (KJV)

Devotional: A Fieldside Lament

I remember a time when the night had a voice.
A whippoorwill calling somewhere just past the woodline,
and a bobwhite whistling in the briars.
They were small, simple sounds—but holy to a boy who knew
his way home by earshot,
by the ring of his mama’s brass school bell.

Back then, the dark was still dark.
Not orange-glowed from some warehouse complex a mile away.
Not pierced by the hum of interstate freight and sodium lights.
You could sit in your yard and hear nothing but the wind,
an owl, maybe the rustle of raccoon feet.
The night was slow, and sacred, and alive.

I remember the smell of sweet fermenting leaves—
not rot, but autumn’s exhale.
The scent of change, not fire.
Honeysuckles twining through fences, their scent
carried in every breeze.

We played in yards, fields, and woods,
not fenced in, not watched through Ring cameras.
We knew the names of the men who pumped our gas,
the women who sold us licorice, bread rolls, and fish hooks.
We got our fishing licenses at the same place we got our news—
by name, not by barcode.

There’s a stream behind the house I grew up in.
A mile back, maybe less if you take the old deer trail.
Amber water from tannin-rich roots,
skunk cabbage sprouting like memory,
cranberries that once filled the bogs in the 1800s
now barely clinging to the edges.

I brought my kids there once.
Tried to show them what quiet looked like.

But the houses are creeping in now.
Loud cars on cut-in trails.
Dune buggies, maybe.
The woods don’t echo anymore. They strain.
The land’s been colonized not by settlers,
but by developers with bulldozers and brochures.
They clear ten acres at a time,
or fifty, or five hundred.
They call it progress.
But if a wildfire burns that much forest, it’s a tragedy.
If a man sells it to build boxes on slabs,
they call it growth.

They paved the huckleberries.
They tore up the streambeds.
They cut the starlight out of the sky
with parking lots and 24-hour LED security lights.

I bought a telescope back when the stars still existed.
Now I just look up and remember.

Even the deer have nowhere to go anymore.
So they run—through backyards, across roads,
into headlights and headlines.

And the whippoorwills?

They left so quietly,
most folks didn’t even notice they were gone.

But I did.

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Reflection Prompt:

What sounds, places, or people once anchored your soul—reminding you that the world was good, and God was near?
What still whispers in your spirit of a quieter way, a special memory, or an old path that should not have been forgotten?

Are we willing to stop, stand in the way, and ask for the old paths again?
Or have we been too quick to trade them for something louder, faster, brighter—but emptier?

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Final Reflection & Invitation:

Jeremiah’s words weren’t just for ancient Israel—they’re a call to every soul that’s grown tired of the noise.
The Lord doesn’t ask us to invent new ways. He invites us to remember. To stop. To look. To ask. And to walk in what is still good.

Maybe your world no longer sounds like it used to. Maybe the stars are hidden now.
But there’s still a path—worn, trusted, old as Eden—that leads to rest.

Will you ask for it?

And if everything else changes—if the whippoorwills go silent, if the woods are swallowed in concrete, if the sky itself dims—

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.
—Hebrews 13:8

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Listen……….whippoor -will.