Day 58: Music In Rest

"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 hymns 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 beat time with unvarying 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 key note.  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."

- John Ruskin