Ringing in my ears are the deep vibrations of the bellowing strings - the cello races, the double bass pulses, and the fiddle flies over them all, notes jumping, dancing on the air. Lights twinkle gently through the branches of our decorated tree and the rising anticipation of secret gifts and surprised joy begins to crescendo along with the music.
We are home, and we are grateful for another day lived with fullness. We discover at the end of each day once again how our nobility and our fallenness have intermingled to create yet another story of gratefulness to our Creator. As I watch the fingers pressing and gliding over the strings I cannot help but rejoice over the noble capacities each and every one of us possess as image-bearers of an infinite-personal God. We can stand over our songs, our words, our homes, and our lives, and in a very real sense exclaim "It is good." And yet, we fall so far throughout each day that the sound of creation's beauty is drowned out in the noise, wars without and fears within, very much like the most virtuous music heard through fathoms of deep water.
Virtuouso. I think of one who has so honed a skill, so beat his body and mind as to plum the depths of the image of God and arise with a glimpse of the divine to share with a broken world. And so often the message is blurred, twisted, choked, misused, even worshiped, all to no good end. It saddens the heart. Four teenagers lost this past week in a tragic car accident, as their stolen car was pursued by the police right past our home on 1st street. What meaning could there be to such a pointless end to human life? I think of my neighbor who works at the Galt House downtown, telling me about the church group who demanded the dismantling of the hotel's Christmas decorations and asked for light jazz in the lobby, rather than holiday music. When life already seems so petty and pointless, why must those who claim Christ add to the pettiness? Can there be no beauty, no appreciation for the world and its wonders, including those wonders made by human hands?
Music. After the last notes have rung clear, I desperately try to hang on to the sound, hoping that memory will do justice to the emotion, the longing expressed in wordless streams of melody. But it fades. Fading lives, fading songs, fading hopes and dreams. Let it linger, let it stir our hearts toward the source of such beauty and find there a real refuge in this vaporous world. We do ourselves such a disservice by shunning material things which were intended to be thoroughly enjoyed - so much enjoyed that they point us to the source (1 Tim. 4).
Is there some small pleasure in your life that sends a thrill through your spine? Does even the memory of it draw you in and fixate your thoughts? Consider what this experience is telling you. If you're like me, it's in the strains of harmony, strings vibrating and notes resounding, telling me that creations of beauty are not in vain - they are a most desirable signpost in an often gloomy world.
Merry Christmas to you all!
Jason Shaw
