More on Music and Rests

Each January we all probably tackle clutter somewhere --in the house, the mind, the garage. While I edited my Christmas card list on this snowy Friday, I ame across a get well card I'd saved from my summer 2007 surgery. A friend had sought out this quote and copied it into the card. The wisdom of Ruskin's comments again gave me pause. Perhaps you'll take the time to ponder the words and allow the Lord to apply them to your current circumstances.

Quoted by Elisabeth Elliott from John Ruskin:


“There is no music in a rest, but there is the making of music in it. In our whole life-melody, the music is broken off here and there by ‘rests,’ and we foolishly think we have come to the end of time. God sends a time of forced leisure –sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts – and makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our lives and we lament that our voices must be silent, and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the creator. How does the musician read the rest? See him bet time with unwavering count and catch up the next note true and steady, as if no breaking place had come between. Not without design does God write the music of our lives. But be it ours to learn the time and not be dismayed at the ‘rests.’ They are not to be slurred over, not to be omitted, not to destroy the melody, not to change the keynote. If we look up, God Himself will beat time for us. With the eye on Him, we shall strike the next note full and clear.”