This Week's Praise

"Betelehemu" by Morehouse College Glee Club

Thursday, September 13, 2007

SWEETER AFTER A REST

In six days the Lord made everything.… On the seventh day he rested.

Exodus 20:11

Time has skyrocketed in value. The value of any commodity depends on its scarcity. And time that once was abundant now is going to the highest bidder.…

When I was ten years old, my mother enrolled me in piano lessons.… Spending thirty minutes every afternoon tethered to a piano bench was a torture.…

Some of the music, though, I learned to enjoy. I hammered the staccatos. I belabored the crescendos.… But there was one instruction in the music I could never obey to my teacher’s satisfaction. The rest. The zigzagged command to do nothing. What sense does that make? Why sit at the piano and pause when you can pound?

“Because,” my teacher patiently explained, “music is always sweeter after a rest.”

It didn’t make sense to me at age ten. But now, a few decades later, the words ring with wisdom—divine wisdom.

The Applause of Heaven
[1]

[1]Lucado, Max; Gibbs, Terri A.: Grace for the Moment: Inspirational Thoughts for Each Day of the Year. Nashville, Tenn.: J. Countryman, 2000, S. 282

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