In tune with God

I enjoy music. There is nothing more thrilling to me at Christmas time than to hear a great choir singing Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” When I’ve attended junior high orchestra concerts, my heart has swelled with joy to see the earnest effort of the youngsters and to hear the majestic sounds. Over the years I’ve developed a love for a variety of music – everything from church hymns to classic to rock to pop to country and bluegrass. I admire anyone who can sing well. I’ve tried to learn to play some instruments, too, and I do get a kick out of that enterprise, even if I do just play for my own ‘amazement.’

Something like a serendipity happened to me during a break at a church meeting a few years ago in Knoxville, Tennessee. I’d brought my banjo in the hopes that a couple of my buddies would bring their instruments and we might have a chance to play together. The three of us rendezvoused in the conference hotel lobby late one afternoon when there was no one around. We figured the management would tell us to take it outside, but it was awfully hot outside, so we chanced it. We started to sing old gospel favorites like “I’ll Fly Away” and “Farther Along.” Surprisingly, other folks began to gather around to listen and even to join in. Before long, the lobby was almost packed out, and there were people on the atrium balconies all the way up to the eleventh floor! We had a great time.

But in the midst of this impromptu hoe-down, the time came for me to take a banjo solo on one of the songs. I’d only been playing the banjo a few months, and was not very good at it. You can imagine how apprehensive I was with all these people around. But I plunged ahead. Unfortunately, there had been so many people singing, and we’d been playing our instruments so hard just to be heard, that one of my strings had gotten badly out of tune. That was miserable! I couldn’t figure out any way to stop and tune up in the middle of the solo, and I’m not adept enough to hit a tuning pin on the fly, so I just played as best I could. It was embarrassing, but the folks didn’t seem to mind. They clapped along anyhow. I realized, then, that though my string was out of tune, the experience itself was perfectly in tune. As I later reflected on it, it seemed to be in tune with what God intended for that moment in time! The three of us hadn’t planned it that way. We just made ourselves available, and something wonderful happened.

Is that the way God uses us in witness, do you think?