Wednesday in the Word: Losing the Music

When I was a kid, I took piano lessons. I didn’t really like to practice, but my mom bought me a book of music with television and movie theme songs in it. I wanted to play those songs. At least with these songs, I practiced more than I did before.

I pulled the music from the book and put each piece in page protectors in a binder to making it easier to flip through the songs. One song was played more than any of the others. Jessica’s Theme from The Man from Snowy River. I loved that song. It was played so often I finally learned to play all three pages by heart.

I eventually stopped playing regularly, but I held onto my music. Through the years, I get in a playing mood and bring some of it out. Jessica’s Theme is my warm-up music. At least, part of it is. I’ve lost all but the middle page of music. I still have the first page memorized, but the third page was the most complex. There’s no way I will ever remember it without the music.

I’ve searched for it online. I can’t remember the name of the book, though I think it was a Dan Coates book. And all of the sheet music available for download is in a different key or a more complicated arrangement. I need the plain old key of C. That’s what I originally learned.

I’ll keep looking, but until I can find a copy, I’m stuck. I’ll keep practicing what I have memorized, and I’ll refresh myself on the second page. However, without that third page, the song will remain incomplete. Not sounding how it was written.

Sometimes we approach God’s word the same way I did my music lessons. In our youth (or our spiritual immaturity) we fail to see the importance of spending time in scripture. We read it because “good christians” read the Bible. Occasionally, we find a passage or book we enjoy and go back to it again and again. The concepts in that one area become part of who we are and how we think.

Time goes on. We get busy.  Jobs and families and being busy distract us. We don’t have time for our good Christian checklist, and because we never learned to read it because we love spending time with God, we set aside our Bible. We catch up with God on Sundays, when we’re feeling guilty, or when we need something from Him.

But our time away from Him, from His words to us, have hurt us. Even that one piece of scripture we knew so well has faded in our hearts and minds. Parts of it may remain, but it’s not quite the same. We are unsure of the truth, being fed a constant diet of lies from the world that sound pretty. We want to hear God’s song to us again, but our ears aren’t used to the sound of His voice anymore. He’s still singing, but we aren’t as good at hearing.

There is good news though. God is always waiting for us to come back. If we seek Him, He’s not going to hide. Time spent in His word will bring us close to Him once more. His music will be in our hearts, guiding our actions. We’ll know His song from the song of the world. We will come to recognize His voice.

And unlike me trying to relearn the song I’ve lost, we don’t have to scour the internet or find some obscure out of print piece before we can reconnect with God. He’s there waiting for us. We simply have to open His word and let Him speak.

Isaiah 55:11 “So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But is shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”

John 8:31-32 “Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'”

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