Three hundred voices joined together to sing the same measure one more time. The director had to stop practice several times, because one or two individuals repeatedly missed a rest. Invariably, every time a group this large stops singing at any given part of a song, a single voice stands out like a sore thumb. And so, we practiced the same musical phrase, again and again, until the entire group recognized the rest in the measure – a crucial pause to translate the dramatic nuances of the song.
The incident happened during one of my church’s recent choir rehearsal, and it made me think about the importance and misunderstood beauty of life’s pauses … and even God’s silence.
There is no music in rests, but they are a crucial part of any song. Any musician knows it: Composers create the rests in music as an intrinsic and valuable part of each piece. By adding dramatic pauses, great composers elevate the quality of any masterpiece. No, there is indeed no music in a rest, but it nevertheless creates music; therefore, when performers slur over or omit the designed pauses in a music score, they crush the melody as it was intended by its creator.
Everyone experiences times when life’s music is broken off by a long “rest.” Times of waiting. Times when it seems like nothing is happening. Times when it feels like God has forgotten us.
To me, personally, when it comes to life’s “rests,” I am naturally tempted to act as that one individual who lifts up her voice when the music is supposed to come to a pause.
“Hurry up, already.”
“Why is nothing happening?”
“Let me do something!”
“Oops, my bad. I should have paused.”
Yes — I have hurried up the music and sped up the tempo many times before. I have been impatient and dismayed at life’s rests. Through the years, however, I have become increasingly aware of God’s hand during those periods of seeming nothingness. We may not understand the silence nor see the growth, but he is nonetheless at work.
Farmers also know this concept too well. They prepare the soil, plant the seeds, and look at their bare fields for weeks or months, before spotting the first sprouts. They know it’s time for earth to do the growth. It’s time to rest in the assurance that the harvest will come. You will certainly never see a farmer dig up the seed to make sure it is growing properly. They know better — it is!
Patience and trust. Farmers know the concept too well. We must learn from them and not meddle when God calls us to simply wait and trust, and understand that God’s silence does not mean he is not near. Late British evangelist and author Dr. George Campbell Morgan said it best: “Waiting for God is not laziness. Waiting for God is not going to sleep. Waiting for God is not the abandonment of effort. Waiting for God means, first, activity under command; second, readiness for any new command that may come; third, the ability to do nothing until the command is given.”
In our impatience and pride, we often think nothing is happening unless we are doing something. And so, we speed up the tempo, fail to pause before speaking, or get our hands moving when we are called to be still. As we do so, we fail to understand that God designed the “rest” for a reason. It’s not our turn to do anything. Yet we must remember that the music is not over. He is still holding the baton and knows when to call us to sing again. And sometimes, wonder of wonders! Those dreadful “rests” come just before the climax of life’s music score.
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