The Preacher wrote in Ecclesiastes, “for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
The divinely employed author of Ecclesiastes seems to be calling us to see something else at work in the seasons and all of the matters of life. It is only God himself is able to give vision to look through the seasons and the matters to discover the beauty of a remotely present music keeping time. On this thought I like the Frederich Bueckner quote that came to me this morning like a bird perched at my winter window:
“Music helps us to ‘keep time’ in the sense of keeping us in touch with time, not just time as an ever-flowing stream that bears all of us away at last, but time also as a stream that every once in a while slows down and becomes transparent enough for us to see down to the streambed the way, at a wedding, say, or watching the sun rise, past, present, and future are so caught up in a single moment that we catch a glimpse of the mystery that, at its deepest place, time is timeless”
“Opposed to the idea that the world of perception is the bottom of reality” (Heschel, Moral Grandeur, 165) and stretching the sinews of the soul to touch the the essence of cyclical season and passing matters I would hope to touch the Lord of season and be “sustained by the forces that flow from hidden worlds” (Heschel).
Buechner, Frederick. Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. New York: Harper, 1973.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua and Susannah Heschel. Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1996.