Music And Discipleship预览

"Transience"

Life does not take place in a fish tank. It does not take place in a controlled experiment. It most certainly does not take place within a statistical analysis spreadsheet. The context of life is a journey—it’s transient. It moves. Trade grows when economies rise and fall. Attitudes fluctuate when introduced to praise and to pain.

It is my opinion, that in most discipleship models I’ve experienced, that the journey of life is not embraced. Discipleship is seen as a 5-week curriculum of truths to be learned, and a mature disciple is seen as one who is gloriously joyful all the time. Is this right? 

I think music can help us think better! For example, consider the majesty of classical music … whether you like it or not.  As some classical pieces begin, they begin in intensity. The notes are rhythmic, fast, intense, and precise, and they capture the audience in their story. They move dynamically as they crescendo louder and decrescendo toward silence in their exposition. The spirit is gripping and motivating, and culminates at that one held resounding note, “Baaaahm.” 

Like the coming of spring, the flutes then enter with a sweet melody, undergirded by the violins. The music is slow and sweet. It develops patterns of lifts and falls, ins and outs, loud and soft. Sections conclude, only to be lifted out into a transposed key that takes the song in an entirely different direction. The notes go up, and the instruments change from soft and sweet to low and powerful. The French horns wail, and the percussion slams. This section repeats. The music may speak the same phrase over and over, but it has a first, second, and third ending; each ending is just a little different than the next, but each builds off the one before it. 

Finally, the song returns to the key it started in and it wavers, moves, and bangs all around until the final glorious moment comes when the song slows to a climactic end.

Could it be that God shaped our lives to move more like a song then a science? Should we only embrace mountaintop experiences as good, while snearing at the times in the valley with disgust. Or, should we see it all working together to play out a masterpiece that leaves the composer and the audience in tears of joy and fulfillment? 

You be the judge in how this changes everything!