Space Between the Notes

A large Cottonwood tree stands in my front yard. Surrounding it are other trees. However, the Cottonwood tree does not have any leaves. It stands tall and erect, with small buds on the tips of the branches, but no evidence of life. It appears that sometime in early spring, it budded out, and then it stopped. It never fulling expressed itself as a tree.

I shared with my friend Lori, “I feel like that tree this week. I feel like I budded out, but now I’ve stopped.”

She wrote back … “Andrea, sometimes it is two steps forward and one back. I will pray that you are not stalled, but just pausing.”

Pausing. I needed to realign my thinking on what “pausing” is really all about.

Pausing is not useless. It can be useful. It can be beautiful. It can be a time of rest. It can be a time of reflection. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I fall in to the idea that if I am not busy doing something for the Lord, then I am just that -- not doing something for the Lord.

I need to stop – pause – my thinking and realign it with God’s thinking. There are times when He calls us into seasons of rest. Like times of trial, these can be growing times, if we chose to set our hearts on allowing God to use them in our lives. They may be a gift to us.

I don’t know a lot about music, but from what I can tell, areas of silence – “rests” – are significant to the song. Claude Debussy, a French Classical Composer, said “Music is the space between the notes.” These spaces add character to the song and allow the listener to gather in the sounds and reflect on the melody. They are just as much part of the song, as the notes.

God uses times of silence or pause as accents in the song that He is writing with our lives. We may not understand what they are there for, or even know what to do with them, but without them, our song would not be as lovely for Him.

So if you feel as if you are in time of pausing, know that God has not abandoned you. He is working in this time, too. He is using it to grow character in you and making you more like His Son. It may be a time when He uses it for you to gather in the sounds of His voice and reflect on the melody of the song that He is writing. Surrender yourself in this time, stop fretting and running to find “something to do” and just be with Him. Wait patiently and confidently in the Lord (Psalm 37:7), in the "space between the notes.".