I have been reading a book lately called, "Safe in the Everlasting Arms" and came across this paragraph that was written more than a hundred years ago by the artist 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 foolishly think we have come to the end of time. God sends a time of forced leisure-sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts- and makes us 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 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, nor 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 eyes on Him we shall strike the next note full and clear."
Once again the Lord has given me a word of encouragement from and old dead guy. I cannot help but see the wisdom in this during a time, once again in my life, where I have no idea where "the music is going." At this point it is a time of rest, though I have struggled with my flesh in being anxious over what lies ahead. It is perfect that in music the word is rest or Selah. Selah (hebrew: סלה) may be the most difficult word in the Hebrew Bible to translate, especially as nobody knows what it means. Selah is probably either a liturgico-musical mark or an instruction on the reading of the text, something like "stop and listen". The Psalms were sung accompanied by musical instruments and there are references to this in many chapters. Thirty-one of the thirty-nine psalms with the caption "To the choir-master []" include "Selah" so the musical context of selah is obvious. Selah notes a break in the song and as such is similar in purpose to Amen in that it stresses the importance of the preceding passage.
Rest....Stop and Listen...I will lean on the things in my life that are assured and realize that there is a preceding passage that I am so amazed that my Father in Heaven has written. I must look to Christ, the author and perfector of my faith that I may stike the next note full and clear. C.S. Lewis once said, "Look to yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him and with Him everything else thrown in." May I submit to death, death of my ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of my body-in the end may I submit with every fibre of my being.
