When I walked past the choir room at church the other day, Rev. David Diebold was playing some classical music (loudly…very loudly). It blows my mind that music, which was created hundreds of years ago, still speaks to me. These composers used the same musical notes that we use today and will be using for as long as music is being created. Somehow with these limited resources we have been able to create a huge variety of music over the centuries. The creativity comes from putting the limited resources together to express what is happening in the heart and the mind of the composer. The art is taking something limited and common, like a sound, and crafting it to make something that is artful and expressive. Music reveals the beauty, pain, joy, praise – all of the things that make life wonderful and scary that are already around us.
Our theologies, prayers and worship are limited and simple resources like musical notes. What is magical about a life of faith is that sometimes with these resources art happens. There are moments that, with the simple tools of our life, we have deep experiences of the divine. When we think and read, or sing and worship, or simply try to “be,” there are moments when we see the creator face to face. The God that created us is continuing to reach out, and sometimes we have to pay attention using our resources. While our resources are limited, God’s are not. The musician does not compose music to create love, but to reveal the love that is present in the world. We do not worship or pray or think theologically to create God…we do these things to experience the God who has always been there more fully.
Justin
