No one knows who said this - in fact, it may never have been said or written originally in that form at all. It's probably a conflation from several minds. But it poses an interesting possibility. One that isn't always in play, of course - some stimuli produce instant reaction for which there is no gap in which to make any kind of choice. Those reactions are embedded within our minds and graven on our psyche.
But the entrance of God's Word brings light. It opens, by the Spirit's creative energies, a space, often elongated and by nature sacred, in which we can pause to consider and then to respond.
When we read the Scriptures, as we intentionally stop to pray with the psalmist, "Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law", we find we've entered that space. It's not time standing still - we wrestle continually with thoughts that race within the gaps between the passing of the seconds and discover, to our dismay, that time hasn't stopped and our distractibility has betrayed us once more. No, it's not the suspending of time but it sometimes is its elongation. The unknown author has chosen well.
And in that Spirit-given space there are possibilities and invitations to sit, like Mary, at the Master's feet, to mine the gold of divine promises, to carve for ourselves clefts in the rock, as we look to the Rock that is higher than we.
It can't really be explained. It's hard enough simply to describe it. But we know it's real. The Lord is there. He has purposely opened for us a doorway into animated suspension. And in that realm of light he delights to answer our prayer and we catch glimpses of those "wonderful things", indeed the Wonderful One, he whom our heart desires.
As this year opens before us, we might want to pray that our rushing hearts would be hushed and our frantic pursuits halted, for a moment or two - moments in which the Lord Jesus himself meets with us. That with Isaiah we might know our lips touched with live coals, that with the two on the Emmaus road we might know our hearts strangely warmed within us. In the spaces between the seconds.
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As pants the hart for cooling streams,
When heated in the chase,
So longs my soul, O God, for Thee,
And Thy refreshing grace!
For Thee, my God, the living God,
My thirsty soul doth pine;
O when shall I behold Thy face,
Thou Majesty divine!
God of my strength, how long shall I,
Like one forgotten, mourn?
Forlorn, forsaken, and exposed
To my oppressor's scorn.
Why restless, why cast down, my soul?
Hope still, and thou shalt sing
The praise of Him who is thy God,
Thy health's eternal spring.
To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
the God whom we adore,
be glory, as it was, is now,
and shall be evermore.
(Nahum Tate, 1652-1717
Nicholas Brady, 1659-1726)
