Our Daily Bread: Hope and Strength for Times of IllnessMuestra

Musical Interludes God writes the music for our lives. Our role is to follow His lead—humming, harmonizing, blending, and singing in tune. Serving the Lord, like singing, can be stirring and rewarding. But when we are set aside by illness, or replacement, or retirement, the interludes can be frustrating and unfulfilling. When God says to us, “Come . . . rest a while” (MARK 6:31), we may not want to stop. It seems that our performance is over, that we’ve come to the end of our song. If we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed with our inactivity, it will cause us to focus on our defects and our circumstances. But we need to remind ourselves that the Lord may be using our time of rest to make our music better. The Great Conductor is counting time with precision. There is more to the arrangement than we know. If we keep our eyes on Him, in time He’ll enable us to chime in again. In the meantime we can enjoy the rest. The quiet times are opportunities to quiet our souls and compose ourselves for the measures that lie ahead. The rest is not a mistake, nor an omission, but a necessary part of the symphony God wrote in the beginning and is conducting for us every day. The Conductor knows best. Wait on Him. —David Roper God uses life’s stops to prepare us for the next start.