Just sharing a reflection from my journal about Good News, God's Kingdom, and music.
I love this word picture I read to describe the Good News.
"Jesus forms a movement of people who trust him and believe his message. They believe that they don't have to wait for this or that to happen, but rather they can begin living in a new and better way now....life for them is about an interactive relationship - reconciled to God and to one another - so they see their entire lives as an opportunity to make the beautiful music of God's kingdom so that more and more people will be drawn into it and so the world will be changed by their growing influence."
This is what my spirit yearns for. This is Good News! Reconciled to God and to others. Living a new and better way now. And I love the phrase "They see their entire lives as an opportunity to make the beautiful music of God's Kingdom."
How cool to think of it as beautiful music! I'm always so intrigued when I consider a person creating a song - creating a new arrangement of musical notes and lyrics. How beautiful! How impossible! Haven't all possible arrangements of musical notes been put together by now? No! It's seemingly endless. Even when someone does a cover of a song, they can rearrange, add, or spin it to be new.
God is endless creativity - just like music. There is no limit to the creative expression we can tap into when we are reconciled with THE Creator! We can "make the beautiful music of God's Kingdom" and it can be fresh and new every single day. It can never be stagnant.
We can enjoy music that has been made and has been passed down and has endured. We can create new music. We can certainly be drawn to different expressions, styles and forms of music. Just like my husband feels his spirit lift while he's by the ocean and mine when I'm on a trail surrounded by trees. Some will find their spirit lift when music is lyrically pointing them to truth about God. Some will feel a deep stirring when the poetry in the music leads them to contemplation. Some enjoy the simple chords and lyrics that invite ease to sing along. Some enjoy the unpredictable, almost free flowing, unscripted, unchartered route of a guitar riff that you can get lost in and it seems to have no beginning or end.
For me, music speaks to a part of my soul that nothing else seems to penetrate. It transcends my typical pathway of assimilating information. It opens up a new pathway - beyond the cerebral, cognitive, logical, thinking part of my being - reaching deeper, further, wider. It bypasses the well traveled route I rely on to assess information. It goes to my spirit.
So, I really love that he used this analogy - we can "make the beautiful music of God's Kingdom".
It's overwhelming! It's creative beauty that is endless and beyond words, reasoning and logic.
Yet, I also know that when people study music, it actually integrates mathematics and unwavering rules of the design of the universe.
Isn't that just a picture of God? Endlessly creative, yet somehow woven in to a particular structure that is set and enduring and even predictable.
It's a paradox. I love it! Truth always seems to involve paradox. It stretches me. Is music boundless, creative and ever evolving, or is it somehow restricted to unchanging rules of mathematics? YES! BOTH!
So intriguing. So beautiful. So mysterious. My appetite is insatiable - for new music - and for seeing God in new ways.
