That is a scary thought when life is going well, and an encouraging word when it isn’t.
In the middle of a wonderful experience, the knowledge that all things pass is a reason to savor the moment to its fullest. In the middle of an ordeal, the knowledge that all things pass is a reason for hope and an incentive to endure. There is “a time to mourn and a time to dance”; everything, indeed, has its season.
Sometimes these seasons end suddenly, and sometimes we have time to prepare as best as we can. The only certainty is that it will end. It’s a sad fact: Even if we are able to fulfill the vow that “till death do we part,” for example, we acknowledge in the vow that we will part one day.
Once bitten by this fact and exposed to the devastating pain of that parting, a person can withdraw and never emerge to share again. I think that’s a tragedy; I would not wish a lonely life as a hermit on my loved one after I’m gone. And we each are capable of giving all we have, as long as we live. Life does goes on after loss.
In the meantime, the most important message I can offer is to savor the time while it is happening. Let the knowledge that it will pass encourage you to love and live life with everything you’ve got.
I feel like traveling somewhere where music flows from every doorway and you can hear the dreams in the air wherever you step — not frustrated dreams but fulfilled dreams, because being in this place was the reason for dreaming. Money changers and merchants may think the music is about the money, but the value of music is in the music itself.
“I have a song, and I’m going to sing it,” the musicians declare. “Oh, I hope you love it and it touches your heart the way it touched mine, but the song exists to be heard, and now you can hear it, because I’m here to sing it and now it’s your song, too.”
Doorway after doorway, other songs emerge, until all the songs link together into one cacophonous song that shouts “Love” to all who have ears to hear.
“Music is God speaking,” one poet said.
“It soothes the savage breast,” said another.
I wish I could sing all day, and who’s to say that I can’t, or that I won’t? These songs are mine, your songs are yours, and they are ours when we share, and songs are meant to be shared.
And so the song-makers take refuge in every doorway and sing their songs, and people come to listen and join in.
I want to go to that place. I want to stay in that place all day and into the night, until I have all the music I need, and even then I will crave more, because music is love, and love is musical, and we all need love, and love is all we need.
What is that song you are singing?
Here is my song, too.
The words and the melody are dancing;
I can teach you the steps,
or you can make your own as they move you.
Funny, isn’t it, how just the thought of music has my fingers playing allegro across the page — the harmony may not be perfect but it feels just so; the illusion of perfect harmony is almost as good as the reality, or perhaps the off-key reality is as beautiful as the illusion, because it is music, and music is love, and love is all we need.
I want to make music and listen to music all day and every day. I suppose I should take time to eat and to sleep, but I want the music to keep going.
And so it does — there is music in the sighing of the wind, and rhythm in the turning of the clothes dryer, and music in the tires on the highway. The world is a symphony if we only stop to listen and hear what we’re hearing in its solemn and silly and somber and joyous totality.
What am I saying? What have I said? I will have to go back and read it, and perhaps it will look like nonsense, and perhaps it will look like common sense so obvious I should have felt it in my heart or thought it with my brain, because music is wizardly and holy and everywhere we go.
There are lovely passages scattered throughout the apostle Paul’s letters about living a Christian life.
You know the type, and I quote them fairly often here …
“The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”
And, of course, “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
People often talk about Christians living boring lives, since they’re instructed to live like fuddy-duddies (or whatever the more modern word is for a life where you don’t get to do anything “fun”).
The truth is when you turn your life over to Christ, you tend to give up the “fun” stuff not because you’re being coerced, but because it doesn’t interest you anymore. When you’re overwhelmed with love, joy, peace and all those other fruitful things, there’s precious little time for what more worldly types might call “fun.”
