REST
“There is no music in
a rest, but there is the making of music in it.”
—John
Ruskin
God writes the score; that’s his part. Our part is
to sing along—warbling, harmonizing, humming...
Singing is stirring and rhapsodic. The hardest
measures are those nagging interludes when our voice is missing: when we’re set
aside by illness, resignation or retirement, when for a time God says to us, “Be
still.” It may seem to us that our performance is over, that we’ve come to the
end of our song.
If we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed with
inactivity it will fret us no end and cause us to focus on the defects in us,
in every person and in every place. But if we know that the rest is God’s will
we’ll be at peace
The Great Conductor is counting time with precision.
There’s more to the arrangement than we know. If we keep our eyes on him in his
good time he’ll give us the nod and we can chime in again.
In the meantime enjoy the rest. The quiet times are
opportunities to compose our souls and ready our selves for the measures that
lie ahead. Rest is not an oversight or an omission, but an essential part of
the symphony God has written for us in eternity that he’s conducting every day.
