Taking time out

I'm taking a little bit of a breather fro my studies, currently. I've been working on comparing the text of the Hebrew Bible that I have with several other versions to see how they match up. Ultimately, you want to come up with something that you think is as close to the original as possible. If nothing else, it gives you an exercise in textual criticism that'll come in handy around page 20 when you're typing up your paper.

I was thinking about the necessity of pausing. Sometimes we pause movies (or TV if you've got that feature) to leave the scene for a minute to do another task. We pause music in order to talk with someone or to answer the phone. The point is that we pause one task in order to pick up another for a shorter period of time than pushing "stop" would necessitate. We don't want to leave it for good, we just want to take a couple seconds to stop.

Writing this journal is my taking time to stop. I'm taking time from my homework in order to consider what it is to pause for a minute. The week pauses...or at least it should, one day each week to stop normal activity and to do something else. Pausing makes us realize that we don't have control over our lives or our time. Taking intentional time to stop what we're doing to consider the Lord, to pray, to offer service, to meditate, or even to journal our random musings reminds us that our time is not our task master. We are servants of the Lord who created time as well as space and nothing He created should enslave those who put their trust in Christ.

So I'm taking time to pause. I'm stopping for just a second to listen to the music in my headphones, to talk to my fiancee, to smile at a friend, and to pray, to meditate, and to journal.

Play.