COMPOSED

The piano provides a space for me to be honest with God. It inspires worship as well as a form of prayer. He quiets my mind, draws out festering thoughts, speaks to hidden wounds, applies a reassuring, healing salve to heartache. As I release these unwelcome collections to Him, I offer my heart in their place – with an open posture, grateful, listening. This restorative exchange fosters a sort of dialogue, something just beyond description that only music can facilitate. This music is my heart, and it belongs to Him alone. 

In this landing place, I am known by Him. All of me shows up and is revealed to His merciful Presence. And He is attentive, inviting, ever-present. Here, the work of faith instructs, protects, and nourishes, as He leads me in journeys of examination and hope. Shallow rest is temporary, insufficient, so He digs gently down to any root of discontent, and unearths loneliness, selfishness, angst, pride, hypocrisy, guilt, shame, and numerous other forms of ungrace. This foundational practice is a workshop of sorts, where He designs, crafts, restores and refinishes His construction in me. 

The raw source of motivation behind an original composition are my transitory, untrustworthy, emotions. These generate an anguished musical birth, conceived out of grief, despair, broken or strained relationships, apprehension, loss. Without these troubling storms, I don’t experience the desperate need to search beyond myself for relief – contentment and happiness don’t generate the rich, deep soil required for excavation. My insight and solutions are limited, misguided, but His patient vision unfolds clearly, purposefully, reliably. When He deconstructs unfruitful elements within me, habits that serve only my selfish interior, He is gentle, delicate, careful. He alone is able to compost these existing layers, and transform the refuse into fertile ground, ready for something new and worthwhile to take root. 

In an empty and receptive state, I find what I’m looking for among the keys – the comfort of His Presence. I feel, sit, think, try out notes, and repeat. I know there is a song somewhere, I can sense it. But I don’t hear unwritten music in my head, so this can be a lengthy process. Often, though, when my thoughts are too noisy, and I feel like a tangled mess, the basic structure of a new piece will spill out all in one sitting. I quickly scribble notes down and repeat rhythms until they stick. This framework evolves into a consistent ground layer from which future variations spring up. 

Though brought up with classical piano training, I lack professional knowledge of music composition or theory. Innately prone to improvisation from early on, I lean into the open-ended creativity my ad hoc pattern allows. Without binding formulas, I enjoy the surprise of unexpected creation. This solitary musical articulation incorporates hope, ache, determination, lament. A refuge, this is a safe and meaningful arena for introspective work to occur. 

There is no music without my heart in all its various conditions. And no place is more protective and curative for my heart, than in this music. The two exist together, intertwined, complete in their connection. Emptying pain into this sieve of faith allows affliction and sorrow to sift through, becoming navigable through the message of His truths, His Word. Vessels of respite collect the spill of life’s harshest moments. Stings from persistent trials recede into gentle, merciful interludes, sorting out into drifts of restorative strains. My invisible world manifests without explanation, embodied in melody, movement, rhythm -- the vital and compelling essence of a new song.

True, probing, beautiful, rich, alive. Each note with its tiny nuance, placement, contrast, flow; created from the meaning in my soul, known in its fullest only to Jesus. His work is trustworthy, original, sublime in every one of us. 

AMPLIFIED

At times, dissonant, grating tones willfully try to outlast each other, to linger triumphantly. The appeal of discordant combinations is partly in the strain of their beauty, but mostly in the resolution that follows. The initial agitation allows a resulting solace, leads to exhilaration in the refined, finished form -- a harmonious, inspired conclusion. 

It may seem a bit trite to suggest that dissonance in our own lives may be similarly beautifully resolved -- redeemed -- through God’s curing, creative grace. But, for those who experience the painful crucible required to complete a metamorphosis in our hearts, it is not trite at all. We have to let Him get hold of us amidst our grating, discordant, circumstances – conflicts of our own doing, or ones that invade from beyond our control; grief that invites itself in and sits down heavily next to us; trapped in our own racing minds, convinced of all manner of perils. 

When the details of our innermost conditions are laid bare, and we are alone with the God of the universe, there is nothing superficial whatsoever. When our entire desperate self is willing to be known by Him, He can root out the sources of our discontent, reveal important truths we have been blind to and begin the work of His carpenter Son in the workshop of our lives. In each of our unique sources of anguish, and under the weight of all their complexities, we discover His remarkably surprising healing, clarity and peace. 

He knocks on the heavy door of our hearts, ever so tenderly. When we tentatively swing open that portal, He enters. But we don’t extend this welcome until we experience a need to search beyond ourselves. After we exhaust our arsenal of soothing, smothering, distracting, short-lived fixes, we discover the ultimate futility of self-dependence. We learn that we cannot heal what actually needs healing. Our exquisite, essential hunger leads us to the Creator of our very souls, the One completely in love with us. He stands in complete readiness to pour His power into us, yearning for us to know and be known by Him, to respond to His invitation.

Dissonance forces us to pay attention, compels our urgent response, our weak cry of faith. And that weakness compels His very strength. In our forage for the grace and healing we crave, we discover one trustworthy, magnificent Healer. He is revealed through His living and active Word -- Scripture, which shows the plan of His Story -- and through His Spirit, breathing into our being, whispering, longing for us to hear. And from that place, if we call to Him, He ignites a firestorm of transformation in remote places of our hearts that we never even knew existed. 

POSTLUDE

“If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace; if He has made it bitter, drink it in communion with Him. If the providential order of God for you is a hard time of difficulty, go through with it…in the crucible you learn to know God better. God is working for His highest ends until His purpose and man’s purpose become one.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, November 11

“When God gets us alone by affliction, heartbreak, or temptation, by disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted affection, by a broken friendship, or by a new friendship -- when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are dumbfounded, and cannot ask one question, then He begins to expound…There are whole tracts of stubbornness and ignorance to be revealed by the Holy Spirit in each one of us, and it can only be done when Jesus gets us alone.” O. Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, January 13

“George Buttrick, former chaplain at Harvard, recalls that students would come into his office, plop down on a chair and declare, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ Buttrick would give this disarming reply: ‘Sit down and tell me what kind of God you don’t believe in. I probably don’t believe in that God either.’ And then he would talk about Jesus, the corrective to all our assumptions about God.” P. Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, p. 264

“Paul is like a musician who does not heed the approval of the audience if he can catch the look of approval from his Master. Any ambition which is in the tiniest degree away from this central one of being ‘approved unto God’ may end in our being castaways. Learn to discern where the ambition leads, and you will see why it is so necessary to live facing the Lord Jesus Christ.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, March 17

“As long as you think there is something in you, He cannot choose you because you have ends of your own to serve; but if you have let Him bring you to the end of your self-sufficiency then He can choose you to go with Him to….the fulfillment of purposes which He does not discuss with you…It is not a question of our equipment but of our poverty, not of what we bring with us, but of what God puts into us; not a question of natural virtues of strength of character, knowledge, and experience – all that is of no avail in this matter…The comradeship of God is made up out of men who know their poverty. He can do nothing with the man who thinks that he is of use to God.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, August 4

“An average view of the Christian life is that it means deliverance from trouble. It is deliverance in trouble, which is very different…God does not give us overcoming life: He gives us life as we overcome…God never gives strength for tomorrow, or for the next hour, but only for the strain of the minute. The temptation is to face difficulties from a common-sense standpoint. The saint is hilarious when he is crushed with difficulties because the thing is so ludicrously impossible to anyone but God.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, August 2

“On the mount it is easy to say – ‘Oh, yes, I believe God can do it’; but you have to come down into the demon-possessed valley and meet with facts that laugh ironically at the whole of your mount-of-transfiguration belief. Every time my programme of belief is clear to my own mind, I come across something that contradicts it. Let me say I believe God will supply all my need, and then let me run dry, with no outlook, and see whether I will go through the trial of faith, or whether I will sink back to something lower. Faith must be tested, because it can be turned into a personal possession only through conflict…The final thing is confidence in Jesus. Believe steadfastly on Him and all you come up against will develop your faith…Faith is unutterable trust in God, trust which never dreams that He will not stand by us.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, August 29

“You can never sanctify to God that with which you long to satisfy yourself. If you satisfy yourself with a blessing from God, it will corrupt you; you must sacrifice it, pour it out, do with it what common sense says is an absurd waste…If you have become bitter and sour, it is because when God gave you a blessing you clutched it for yourself; whereas if you had poured it out unto the Lord, you would have been the sweetest person out of heaven.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, September 3

“We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us our one great aim is to pour out a whole-hearted devotion to Him in that particular work.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, April 23

“Sanctification means the impartation of the Holy qualities of Jesus Christ. It is His patience, His love, His holiness, His faith, His purity, His godliness, that is manifested in and through every sanctified soul. Sanctification is not drawing from Jesus the power to be holy; it is drawing from Jesus the holiness that was manifested in Him, and He manifests it in me. Sanctification is an impartation, not an imitation…In Jesus Christ is the perfection of everything, and the mystery of sanctification is that all the perfections of Jesus are at my disposal, and slowly and surely I begin to live a life of ineffable order and sanity and holiness…”  O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, July 23

The Jesus I Never Knew, Copyright 1995 by Philip Yancey, used by permission.

ENCOURAGING WORD

Romans 5:3-5  ...we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who He has given us. 

James 1:2-4  Consider it pure joy...whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Romans 12:2  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is -- His good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 15:4  For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Romans 12:12  Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

Hebrews 4:12-13  For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes [intentions] of the heart. 

Hebrews 5:7-8  During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered…

2 Corinthians 12:9-10  But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 

John 3:30  He must become greater; I must become less.

John 4:24  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.

Hebrews 7:25  Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him because he always lives to intercede for them. 

Psalm 146:7-8  The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down…

1 Corinthians 15:58  Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

2 Corinthians 5:17  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 

2 Corinthians 5:11  We have spoken freely to you…and opened wide our hearts to you..

Galatians 1:10  Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Ephesians 2:8-10  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. 

James 1:12  Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

1 Peter 1:6-9  …for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

1 Peter 5:10  And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.