One Epic Song Together
By Jessica Brodie
Have you ever tried to pick out the various instruments in a favorite song?
I’m a huge music lover. If you were to go through my music library, you’d find everything—and I mean everything. From secular music to Christian, I love all styles. I’m talking pop, Bluegrass, salsa, rap, emo, old-school rock … everything. I’m a believer that God’s messages are also immersed in the secular, woven throughout everything, so as long as the message is good and the song has a good beat, I’m in.
One of the neatest things about music is the way all the different aspects work together for the whole. One song might have drums, vocals, backup vocals, all harmonizing with the melody simultaneously, plus guitar, maybe piano or strings, and bass. Every once in a while, I can actually pick out the different musical instruments. For example, a bass-heavy song makes it easy to hear the bass guitar, or a song with deep percussion makes it easy to pick out the drums. But a lot of times I can’t really tell the different musical instruments apart. It’s just one big, beautiful song, all working together. All united.
That’s also the way we are—God’s family, God’s people, all different parts and different gifts and graces in different styles, all working together in our own unique ways for the greater good. For God’s purpose in the world.
Many of us are familiar with the apostle Paul’s analogy about us, God’s people, being the body parts and Christ being our head. As he says, the hand or foot or ear or eye cannot tell another they don’t need the other, or exist alone. “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27 NIV).
I love that analogy, but for those of us who are music lovers, I also like to think about us all as a really great song. Think about it—take any song, and then just pull one individual aspect out of it. For example, just listen to the drum part in a song, or the bass guitar, or the piano, or the backup singers. Chances are they all sound really different. You might not be able to recognize the song just based on the drums’ portion, but put those drums together with the bass and the lead guitar and vocals, and voilà, you know exactly what song that is.
It’s the same thing with us. On our own we might not make a whole bunch of sense. Maybe other people can’t even see that we’re part of God’s great big plan—maybe we can’t see the big picture either. But put us together with others, and look what we can all do together with God as our head!
It ties in with what Jesus said about the branches and the vine in the vineyard, about how apart from him we can do nothing (John 5:15). Apart from the song, a drum beat is beautiful, but it’s just that: a drum beat. Put together with all the instruments, that drum beat becomes something glorious.
My oldest son plays viola in his high school orchestra. He loves it. But it’s funny, because sometimes I’ll go to hear his whole orchestra play a song, and it sounds completely different from the part he’s been rehearsing at home. That’s because the viola portion of the song is very different from the violin and the cello and the bass. But put them all together, and it sounds like a new thing.
That’s the way it is with us, my friends. God is doing a new thing, a great and glorious thing, with all of us. We’re all different, and that’s not a bad thing. Some of us have different beliefs about sin, or what it looks like to follow God, and sometimes from the outside it’s hard to see how we all fit together.
But we do fit together. We’re all part of God‘s family, and together infused by his magnificent and miraculous power, we help the Great I Am breathe a fresh breath across the world and reach the multitudes.
We get to be part of that big wonderful, eternal song, sung by heavenly hosts now and forever—one epic song together.
This week, let’s think about that: How am I part of God’s whole? How can walking with my neighbor, even one extraordinarily different from me, further God’s plan and purpose?
