Do You Filter Out the Music?

 

I was participating in an online faith development group called Spiritflow, one of the ministries of Pinnacle Leadership Associates.  Mark, who leads the group,  enlisted me to lead a centering activity for the gathering, a time to center the group's thinking on God and the theme of the meeting. Knowing that we were focusing our time on the practice of “Allowing,” welcoming God's loving work in our lives, my mind went to a scripture and a song I wanted to use to focus our group on the topic of the day.  The scripture was Ephesians 1:17-20,

 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. ¹⁸ I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, ¹⁹ and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength ²⁰ he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms… 

Having read that scripture, I took my guitar in hand and shared a musical arrangement of the words of that passage.  I’m not an accomplished singer or guitarist, but I usually present well enough that the music is a positive contribution to the moment.  That’s when this singing experience became a little strange.  I didn’t feel that I was connecting with the other members of the gathering.  The music wasn’t having the impact I dreamed it would have.  I finished the song and, rather sheepishly, called on Lexanne, another group leader, to begin the prayer time.  All through the session, I wondered why the music didn’t get through. 

After our gathering concluded, a few of us hung around a few minutes longer to process and evaluate the meeting.  As we relived the session, Chris, another group leader, asked me what turned out to be a very timely question, “Dee, before you sang your song, did you choose the Zoom sound option “Maintain original sound for music?”  I didn’t know such a thing existed.  Chris, more a native to technology than this aging tech immigrant, was also seeking an explanation, not for what he felt, but what he heard.  Zoom’s audio component filters out all sounds other than a human voice to minimize distractions.  Most often, that’s a good thing, but not when you are singing with guitar.  The program filtered out almost all of the guitar sounds, leaving only my voice and Watergate-like gaps of silence between vocal phrases.  The music was there.  I played it and heard it!  But it didn’t reach the ears or the hearts of my hearers because the music was filtered out. 

Part of the spiritual act of allowing is experiencing God’s goodness and redemptive work in a personal way.  God is always making the music of love and grace.  I wonder if my heart isn’t “set” in a way that filters out the music of the Christian life.  I hear the ideas, the requirements, the demands of discipleship, but not the music of God’s tender love and redemptive involvement in every moment of my life. Believing the music is real and present, I need to change the setting of my heart until I hear it, learn it, and join it.  Do you hear the music of God's loving work or do you filter it out?