Music Emotes

Music induces emotion. It seems that when certain sound vibrations tickle our eardrums, our souls are touched. This can bring to life memories of love received or places where we've laughed until we cried or remind us of great pain. We've all got songs that have special meanings to us. Sometimes it doesn't even have anything to do with the song itself, but rather the circumstances in which we heard that song. Canon in D comes to mind for me. What is it about music that influences us?

I've heard an idea that God created the universe through song. I like that. Music is powerful. It can create and destroy. In stringing together notes in certain ways, we create moods, we create passions, we communicate raw depths of our hearts in ways that mere words cannot.

For me, I love music that rises and falls, that hits the high climatic note but also goes low into the bass. I love feeling the rhythm beat through my chest. I love lyrics that mean something, that don't just sing words, but that require you to think. I love songs that are fun, but not always. I love songs that weave with an intrinsic rhythm like waves of an ocean, (usually they are in 3/4 time.) I love songs that speak truth with honesty, that don't shirk from pain, but speak to life and joy through the pain. I love songs that are complex, that took skill to write and skill to play.

I hate songs that are shallow, that speak only about sex or relationships as things to panacea. To sing about love is one thing, and I would argue, a necessary thing, but most popular songs lack any amount of depth, or strength, or sacrifice required for true love to fulfill. People fall in love all the time, and I'm convinced that a lot of times, it is real. But most people turn in inwardly on themselves, and forget how to work at the relationship. That sort of thing is rarely sung about.

Hear the Music

What's it take to wake your soul?

What does it take to impassion that which is dead?

How do we align our hearts to that music which plays throughout the universe, creaking with oak trees swaying, ripping out of the ground, bent low by the hurricane?

As we see the pain around us. Think about it. Taste it. Not the bruised pride, showy pain, but the deep, raw, broken pain that surrounds us. The screaming of people wanting to be loved, wanting to be someone special, wanting to be healed from the loneliness. Live in it. Recognize it for what it is. Don't ignore it. Or your soul will die as well. It will wither in selfish pride and ignorance until it is no more and you fight to keep it that way.

Let us break the chains of apathy!

Let us learn to love!
Not this silly, self serving love, focused only on pleasure.
No conditions.
Only forgiveness.
Only truth.
Deeper and deeper.

But how? But how?

Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28

Wants

God,
I think you want me give you my life, to give you control, that you can use me in mighty ways.
I want to love a woman the way Christ loves the church: passionately, humbly, beautifully, ready to die for her, ready to catch her when she falls and support her in our walk together.
I want to raise kids who believe and live gospel community values in family.
I want to pour myself into their lives and watch them grow.
I want to help hurting people see their selfishness and see Jesus and his joy that overwhelms the pain.
I want to live in that joy. Oh do I want that.
I want to work outside and have deep conversations with people.
I want to be a man of prayer, who is filled with the Holy Spirit, who does not fear but is bold.
I want to laugh until I can't breath. Every day.
I want to know how to cry with someone whose heart is broken.
I want to sit down at the end and tell about all the things I've seen God do, that we did, and everything in between.
I want to create and know and appreciate beauty for what it is, to be able to encourage it and not feel threatened by other people's attempts to capture it.
Help me to know your heart and make it mine.

Paul