Day 4: The Rhythm of Rest

Have you heard a symphony lately? At my first symphony performance, I honestly didn't expect to be impressed. In fact, I expected to be bored. Even when the notes from a violin cut through the air in the stunning solo, I wasn't moved. Then the flutes joined, and I let down my guard a little. Then every one of the nearly one hundred instruments flooded the room, and I fell apart. I leaned back and tried to process it, but comprehension was almost impossible. Each string, key, note, and rest working in unison built a beauty I didn't know even existed.

In the same way, you and I were built to enjoy the symphony God is always playing. We might hear only a single seemingly random symbol crash or bellowing undertone of a cello in our mundane days. We might overlook the moment of silence between the notes, not knowing that pause gives the music its structure. We might miss the whole harmony because the parts are all broken up and have lost their beauty. Yet all our days – the boring, the exciting, the busy, and the quiet – make up our song. God’s stunning symphony.

When I take time to listen to God’s symphony, I start to feel like an absolute fool for spending even one day of my gift of life here numb, checked out, distracted, or fiddling away on my own instead of looking to the Conductor up there on the podium.

But it's so easy to do.

Because we forget the bigger symphony, the great and hidden story, we start to resent and even neglect the small, mundane parts of our lives. We choose distraction instead. But if we could realize the small parts are building Heaven, maybe we wouldn't check out from them. If we could recognize Jesus in the middle of each ordinary, messy, mundane moment, maybe we wouldn't take them for granted. Because He is in every moment. He's in every effort we make to look to Him, as well as in the moments when we forget to do so. We might be with Him in our cubicles, in the carpool lanes, at the table, and even at the kitchen sink. These are the places where we dwell with Him.

Vision and rest, work and joy, and Jesus and difficulty are meant to coexist. When you get caught up in your own spirals of striving and distraction, you lose sight of the beauty of the grand symphony unfolding. As you draw Him, though, you can hear it. He's making something beautiful with your life.

Prayer: Lord, in the small, silent, everyday moments today, open my heart to the symphony You are creating. I choose to call to You and listen for Your bigger song. Amen.