Where There Is No Music

There is no music in a rest, but there is 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 us pause in the choral hymn and we lament that our voices must be silent, and out part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of our Creator. How does the musician read the rest? See him beat time with unvarying count and catch up the next note steady and true, 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 "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 the time for us. With the eye on Him we shall strike the next note full and clear. ~John Ruskin