“C’mon,” my two-year-old nephew said as he took my hand. “Play me.” (Let me translate for you. Play with me.)
“What do you want to play, buddy?”
“Pano,” he said. (Let me translate again. “Piano.”)
So, we sat down at the piano together. I started to play and, for a moment, he just listened.
Then he joined in.
Now, I’m a mediocre pianist at best but let’s just say it got a lot louder and lot more chaotic when he started banging on the keys.
That, of course, didn’t bother me. We were just spending time together. We weren’t trying to make a masterpiece.
But as I listened to him play – or rather, make noise – I thought about how so often my life is just that.
Noise.
There’s nothing beautiful about it. It’s chaotic and cluttered – and usually that’s my fault.
I choose chaos and clutter by what I allow in.
See, ours is a culture that wears busyness as a badge of honor. We boast of our full calendars. We brag about our frazzled lives. We are worn out and proud we are. If I slowed down long enough to think about it, I'm sure it would sound crazy. But, alas, I rarely slow down, so it seems perfectly sensible to me.
What if God never intended our lives to look like that? What if when He told us to rest He actually meant that? What if by grasping for more we were actually experiencing less?
"It's the space between the notes," says Noah benShea, "that make the music."
Without the space between the notes, music disintegrates into noise.
There will always be more notes we could play. That doesn't mean we should.
Allow for space between the notes.
Stop making noise. Start making music.