The Music of My Life

The Lord is my strength and my song; He is my Savior.  (Psalm 118)

So often in Scripture God challenges us:  know and do the will of your heavenly Father.  This I wish to do with my life, as I’m sure you also wish to do.  But like heaven, just knowing the destination doesn’t get us there.  All those worries along the way may distract us from the route.

Our life is meant to be a song of praise to God, and we should want to play the music He has written for us.  That is doing His will.  But we are so like children:  we see what we want and, well, we WANT it.  But we forget the basic instructions that our parents gave us for most anything we might want:  You can have it, but ….  There always was that “but.”  Sometimes that “but” was to encourage me to work harder for something, and sometimes it was to limit my ability to chase after my dreams of heaven here on earth --- my, “I want it now.”  I remember that sometimes I thought my parents were mean:  “You could just give me what I want.”And sometimes I thought, “If you don’t give it to me, then you don’t love me.”   I was a silly child to think those things; I knew better.  I knew my parents always loved me.  I know my God does also.  And if sometimes they make things hard, it is to teach me a lesson.

 If I wish to do anything well in my life --- if I wish heaven, I must work for it.  That was the primary “but” my parents taught me, and that lesson applies to things of God also.  He could give us anything, but it will be better and more appreciated if we work for it.

If we wish to play good music, we must study, and practice, practice, practice, and practice.  And we must seek out advice and welcome criticism from ones who know and play better music than us.  Likewise, if we wish to be saints, we must look to the saints to advise us on how to do that.

And if you become proficient and can play beautiful music, even that is not enough.  If you wish to stand out, if you wish to be noticed and remembered, you will need to find and play extremely well, THAT tune, that one tune that when people hear it played they think:  “That’s his tune.”  Frank Sinatra sang “Chicago.”  Barbara Streisand sang “People.”  Mantovani played “Charmaine.”  St. Thomas Aquinas wrote “Summa Theologica.”  These were music played by them like no one else; music it seems that only THEY were meant to play, the music of their life.

We all have a song to play with our life, our song, written for us by God.  If we can learn it, practice it, hear it in our hearts played as He would love to hear it played, how He wrote it to be played, we will be associated with that song for all eternity.  We will be remembered; He will remember.

We can be the music that God hums for all eternity, the song that He can’t get out of His mind.  And when He hums this favorite tune, He will think of us.  There was a Big Band leader called Wayne King, and his theme song was entitled: “The Melody of Love.”  I think he perhaps stole that name, for it sounds like the name of our song, but he did not steal the music we would play, no not the music.  The music of our life was written uniquely for us, and it is up to us to find it and play it, and use it to give glory to the God who wrote it for us. 

We all would like to do something with our life so that we are remembered, so that our life will have been important.  If we do God’s will for us, play the music intended for us, we will fit within the symphony of all life He created.  We are a unique piece in that orchestra, like a piece in a puzzle.  We may think we are independent and do not matter, but for each unique piece of a puzzle there is another piece, or pieces, which uniquely fits with us, and only us. 

We matter, if we become who we were created to be.  And we will be remembered not only here on earth, but in all eternity, where we will know that our piece helped complete a picture of beauty, a melody of love.

The music of our life has been written; it is just waiting for us to find it and begin.  Then we can go on forever, playing our song, living our life, with a love like no other love, in harmony with God, the maestro of our life.