Today, we just entered what is considered to be the holiest week in the Church Calendar. Throughout this week, my prayer for us is that we will continue to prepare our hearts for the upcoming celebration of Easter, the resurrection of our Savior. We all know the Sunday School answer to the why question of Jesus' death. Yet, do we live as though we truly remember that He came to die for our individual sins as well as our collective sin? It is only human of us that we all too easily forget; however, God is in the business of reminding, of jogging our memory as His word tells us to remember, remember, remember. As the Lenten season continues and the celebration of Easter approaches, I am once again reminded of the ultimate price that my Savior paid on my behalf. He was crushed for my iniquities and was made to suffer because of the load of my guilt and shame.
As musicians, we are constantly required to use our memory. We had to memorize the names of the scale degrees, the order in which they appear, key signatures, nuances, rests, notes, etc. Singers and pianists, in particular, have to commit huge chunks of the literature to memory. It is always fine and dandy to remember all those facts in a theory classroom, a voice studio, or even at a rehearsal. However, the time when memory really matters is during a performance, when the stakes are really high. How often do we go to a piano recital and cringe because the performer has to deal with memory slips? How often, do I personally forget important words while performing an aria or an art song? Almost always, it is because those specific passages were not sufficiently drilled into my heart and absorbed by my body and mind.
Contrary to common belief, memory in itself is quite faithful. The part that is unreliable in us is the process of memorization. As I have been studying patience this past month, the Lord has further instilled in me a desire to seek to memorize as small a chunk as possible and as frequently as possible. As I patiently go over musical passages over and over, I slowly add a couple measures a day. I use the same principle for technical concepts as I do for memorizing music. Then, when it is time for me to perform, I don't have to fret because it is all in me. That process has brought me to this conclusion: memory always serves us what we served it. If we give our memory the gifts of cramming, last-minute pointers, and nervousness, then it will serve us memory slips, disasters, and poor performances. If we give it, instead, steadiness and patient nurturing, then when the pressure is on it will grant us a peace and an assurance that will defy all storms.
When Christ faced the big storms of His life, He recoursed to the Holy Scriptures which, as a man, He had committed to memory. At the onset of His ministry, Jesus used God's word to fight Satan's temptation. When He upturned the trading tables in the temple, He used the Scriptures. Throughout His life, He used God's word to pray, to heal, to comfort, to encourage, to admonish, to revive, and to save. When He faced the most excruciating pain of His life, the spiritual separation between Him and His father, He quoted Psalm 22, one of king David's Psalm, the Psalm of the Cross.
Psalm 22:1a, "My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?
There He was on the cross dying the most cruel death known to man and He was quoting scripture. Why could He? How could He? It was because the consistency of his memory work had provided him with a real closeness with God to such a degree that when He felt separated from His father He desperately clung to the Holy word of God. Although only seven phrases have been recorded as the last words of Jesus on the cross, I wonder how many chapters from God's word constituted the whole of His meditation. It was God's word which gave Jesus the endurance, patience, and strength He needed to die, be buried, and have victory over death.
Psalm 16:8, "I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken."
We all need to memorize scripture. As human beings we change constantly because we tend to be guided by our emotions, and we all know how fickle those are. Since emotions affect the heart which fires signals to the tongue to speak, our words change and our resolve wavers. Unfortunately, our lives are such that we are constantly assailed by spiritual attacks and without God's word in our heart and on our tongue, we are completely defenseless. To borrow the words of Dr. Donald Whitney, "a pertinent scriptural truth, brought to your awareness by the Holy Spirit at just the right moment, can be the weapon that makes the difference in a spiritual battle." So, in order to be victorious, we need to follow the example of Jesus and hide God's word in our hearts so that it can be used by the Holy Spirit to rekindle the flame of our passion. We are all so emotionally run down that, on our own, according to Dr. John Piper, "we do not experience God in the fullness of our emotional potential." In order to remedy that situation, I believe we must spend time exploring the Bible, memorizing the emotions depicted therein, and endeavoring to express those emotions until they become genuinely ingrained in us.
Psalm 119:11, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you."
Psalm 119:14, "I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches."
You may have said in the past that you don't have a good memory and that you can't really memorize scripture. I am telling you that you can. We have all memorized our names, our phone numbers, our social security numbers, our addresses, the ignition key to our car, the trajectory of the fork from the plate to our mouths. In short, we easily memorize the things we use daily. My 2-year old daughter has already memorized several chapters from the book of Psalms only because she is in the kitchen when I teach each verse to my 7-year old. She has learned all of that second-hand because scripture memory is part of her environment. It makes me wonder, what is in our environment that we are memorizing second-hand? Is it gossip, slander, impurity, sexual immorality, triviality, laziness, impatience, apathy toward God?
Would you consider memorizing a little bit of scripture daily? God wants you to and has equipped you with the necessary skills to do it. You simply need to develop the patience and the tenacity to memorize one verse a day or half a verse every day. You also need some sort of accountability. So, choose someone or two, a passage with specific translation and number of verses, and a regular time to meet and quote scripture to one another. Not only will you grow in God's word and be equipped to do His work wherever you are, you will also develop wonderful friendships with other believers.
Go and memorize God's word and speak it back to Him, you'll be amazed to see how blessed and changed you can become.
Happy Easter!
Monday, March 29, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Whole Rest
Hello friends,
It is but a couple of days before my spring break and I have been patiently anticipating that most blessed respite from my daily grind. Whether or not spring break is in the works for you, I bet the idea of rest is one that is always welcome. I believe that desire for rest is one that has been placed within us by our good Creator to help us remember who He is and who we are. Out of the dust He made us, but He made us in His likeness. Therefore, just as He rested after His work of creating, we also need to rest at regular intervals.
Yet, not all of us like the idea of rest, whether in life or in music. I find that the younger or the more inexperienced the performer, the more uncomfortable he/she is with silence. Even more experienced musicians have to remind themselves that it is okay to observe the rests indicated in the music. It is as if there is this magnetic pull inside of us toward more and more sound. This tendency in us has but conditioned us and our audiences to grow uncomfortable with silence, which partly explains the decline in recital attendance. A loud rock band is more likely to attract huge crowds than the most accomplished classical guitarist because of the sheer volume of sound generated.
In music, rests are signs that indicate a time of silence or a brief interruption in the continuum of a musical execution. They exist to frame specific sections of music and to heighten our aural readiness for what is to come. Whole rests are even more effective in that they require more attentiveness for a whole measure. I recall hearing in a sight-singing class this seemingly innocent question,
"why do we have to have these stupid rests?"
And yes, for those of you who are theory teachers, the question came [unfortunately] from a singer. The wise professor calmly answered,
"...because music would cease to exist without the blessing of silence... there would simply be this unending cacophony...and you'd be out of a job since you must breathe in order to sing."
Ouch! Humorous or hurtful though it was, the previous exchange poignantly made me aware of the fact that without silence, there can be no music. Without music, there can be no heartbeat. And without a heartbeat, there can be no life.
This connection between silence, music, heartbeat, and life points me directly to God's word. Psalm 4:4 says,
"...when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent."
Silence affords us the opportunity to place our hearts before the mirror of Christ so the hidden desires of our hearts can be exposed to us and cleansed by the Master refiner. When that occurs, silence ushers us into a place where we can hear the beauteous voice of Christ, which is music to our ears. The word of the Lord, according to Psalm 19, revives the soul and gives joy to the heart, creating the kind of heartbeat that produces and sustains life. Such a life that even the angels pale in comparison.
Christ offers us the only rest that we truly need but we seem to go in all kinds of directions looking for cheap, unfulfilling, depleting rest. We are a plugged-in culture making continuous noise the source of choise for "rest." We have grown incredibly restless, contentious, and haggard in our pursuit for more relaxation. Whole industries are based on vacation, entertainment, leisure, and pleasure such as resorts, movie theaters, tours, etc... How often do we jokingly say to each other, "I need a vacation from my vacation?" After a long day of work or school, do you find yourself longing to park yourself in front of the TV or mindlessly surfing site after site on the internet? With spring break coming or any other break for that matter, do your plans include a time of restoration with God or do you simply plan activity after activity with an occasional fastfood prayer? Often, these leisure plans require a great deal of money and time, the two "lords" of our era. Are you allowing your time and money to dethrone Jesus with your vacation plans?
It is staggering to think that Jesus is doing something entirely different with His vacation. Ever since He ascended to heaven, the scriptures tell us that He is sitting (resting, vacationing) at the right hand of God. Doing what? He is preparing a place for you and me, watching over us, grieving when we disobey, rejoicing when we honor Him, providing for our needs, working tirelessly to bring His kingdom to completion, orchestrating the events leading to His union with His beloved church. In His vacation, He is hard at work preparing for eternal intimacy with His bride. What are WE doing for our gloriously handsome groom? Are we resting in Him or are we running from Him?
My prayer is that we will cherish His words found in Matthew 11:28-29,
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."
Jesus, the Music of all ages, the Heartbeat of every believer, the Hound of heaven, beckons us to enter His rest, true rest. Won't we heed His call?
It is but a couple of days before my spring break and I have been patiently anticipating that most blessed respite from my daily grind. Whether or not spring break is in the works for you, I bet the idea of rest is one that is always welcome. I believe that desire for rest is one that has been placed within us by our good Creator to help us remember who He is and who we are. Out of the dust He made us, but He made us in His likeness. Therefore, just as He rested after His work of creating, we also need to rest at regular intervals.
Yet, not all of us like the idea of rest, whether in life or in music. I find that the younger or the more inexperienced the performer, the more uncomfortable he/she is with silence. Even more experienced musicians have to remind themselves that it is okay to observe the rests indicated in the music. It is as if there is this magnetic pull inside of us toward more and more sound. This tendency in us has but conditioned us and our audiences to grow uncomfortable with silence, which partly explains the decline in recital attendance. A loud rock band is more likely to attract huge crowds than the most accomplished classical guitarist because of the sheer volume of sound generated.
In music, rests are signs that indicate a time of silence or a brief interruption in the continuum of a musical execution. They exist to frame specific sections of music and to heighten our aural readiness for what is to come. Whole rests are even more effective in that they require more attentiveness for a whole measure. I recall hearing in a sight-singing class this seemingly innocent question,
"why do we have to have these stupid rests?"
And yes, for those of you who are theory teachers, the question came [unfortunately] from a singer. The wise professor calmly answered,
"...because music would cease to exist without the blessing of silence... there would simply be this unending cacophony...and you'd be out of a job since you must breathe in order to sing."
Ouch! Humorous or hurtful though it was, the previous exchange poignantly made me aware of the fact that without silence, there can be no music. Without music, there can be no heartbeat. And without a heartbeat, there can be no life.
This connection between silence, music, heartbeat, and life points me directly to God's word. Psalm 4:4 says,
"...when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent."
Silence affords us the opportunity to place our hearts before the mirror of Christ so the hidden desires of our hearts can be exposed to us and cleansed by the Master refiner. When that occurs, silence ushers us into a place where we can hear the beauteous voice of Christ, which is music to our ears. The word of the Lord, according to Psalm 19, revives the soul and gives joy to the heart, creating the kind of heartbeat that produces and sustains life. Such a life that even the angels pale in comparison.
Christ offers us the only rest that we truly need but we seem to go in all kinds of directions looking for cheap, unfulfilling, depleting rest. We are a plugged-in culture making continuous noise the source of choise for "rest." We have grown incredibly restless, contentious, and haggard in our pursuit for more relaxation. Whole industries are based on vacation, entertainment, leisure, and pleasure such as resorts, movie theaters, tours, etc... How often do we jokingly say to each other, "I need a vacation from my vacation?" After a long day of work or school, do you find yourself longing to park yourself in front of the TV or mindlessly surfing site after site on the internet? With spring break coming or any other break for that matter, do your plans include a time of restoration with God or do you simply plan activity after activity with an occasional fastfood prayer? Often, these leisure plans require a great deal of money and time, the two "lords" of our era. Are you allowing your time and money to dethrone Jesus with your vacation plans?
It is staggering to think that Jesus is doing something entirely different with His vacation. Ever since He ascended to heaven, the scriptures tell us that He is sitting (resting, vacationing) at the right hand of God. Doing what? He is preparing a place for you and me, watching over us, grieving when we disobey, rejoicing when we honor Him, providing for our needs, working tirelessly to bring His kingdom to completion, orchestrating the events leading to His union with His beloved church. In His vacation, He is hard at work preparing for eternal intimacy with His bride. What are WE doing for our gloriously handsome groom? Are we resting in Him or are we running from Him?
My prayer is that we will cherish His words found in Matthew 11:28-29,
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."
Jesus, the Music of all ages, the Heartbeat of every believer, the Hound of heaven, beckons us to enter His rest, true rest. Won't we heed His call?
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