Music And DiscipleshipSample

"Sound and Silence"

A squealing peel of rapidly accelerating tires through a bustling metro city produces uniquely distinctive sounds. Bright lights and billboard signs squawk for attention, commuters blare their horns in the midst of traffic contention, and adrenaline becomes the drug of habit. This is noise. This is loud. This is intoxicating. But it cannot all function like this. The soft country road still holds its allure. Even the most highly decorated and most prestigious CEO of a Fortune 500 company needs a day off once in a while. The yearning in the human soul to meander and rest is always present. When the high-octane leader slips away from the bustle and grind, they inevitably find a secluded beach, a quiet meandering river through a mountain scape, or a field covered with cattails only to be accompanied by a picnic blanket, on which lays all the items to make for a bonafide romantic country meal. It is just what a weary soul desires to return to normal.

Sound and silence. Work and rest. Music has a lot to teach us about how this rhythm works itself out in life. Each tone in music as it sounds, does so distinctly. Without the sound, there would be no notes, but greater still, without the source of breath in the performer, there would be no sound. Combined with sounds are also periods of silence, rest, and decay. For one pitch to sound, another has to die away. 

Rest has to remain in balance with work. Without rest, one cannot understand work. Without work, there’s nothing from which to rest. These concepts in music and in life have to hold hands and walk in tandem. This is the profound truth that music teaches us about the very real rhythms of life. We must learn the nature of what it is to sound good notes that contribute to the song in beneficial work, and also how rest is beneficial to the song we are playing. Too little work and the disciple will fall prey to idle hands; too much work and the disciple will fall into idolatry. Too much rest and the disciple will fall into lazy incoherency, and too little rest will weary the soul.

Enjoy today’s readings and consider your own rhythms in work and rest. Ask the Lord to help you to both rest hard and work hard in faith. A faithful disciple does both!

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