After a Rest.

When I was ten years old, my mother enrolled me in piano lessons.  Now, many youngsters excel at the keyboard.  Not me.  Spending thirty minutes every afternoon tethered to a piano bench was a torture just one level away from swallowing broken glass.  The metronome inspected each second with glacial slowness before it was allowed to pass. 

Some of the music, though, I learned to enjoy.  I hammered the stacattos.  I belabored the crescendos.  The thundering fnishes I kettle-drummed. 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.  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.

From The Applause of Heaven, Max Lucado

I read this quote in my devotions last week and bookmarked it to share.  It somehow ties in so nicely with the discipline theme I have been pondering, another facet of the give and take, ebb and flow, work and rest rhythm of a disciplined life.  When one has worked faithfully and diligently, rest is sweet.  When one has experienced sweet rest in an atmosphere of calm and quiet, then one can take one’s place at the keyboard of life and position one’s hands to take up the melody with gusto and joy.  That’s how I feel as this day of repose draws to a close and I prepare to turn the page and pick up the sonnet after the rest.