MERRY CHRISTMAS!
This continues to be a season of transition. God is sweetly reminding me that He is orchestrating my life and bringing about changes in His time, not mine. In this article from Ron Bergthold, he translates transition into musical terms and re-emphasizes that we must stay in step with God to embrace each change as He brings it.
Lord, prepare us for what You have in store. Help us turn from the old key and rise with You to the new key with the passion that can only come from You, Holy Spirit.
~Jon Did You Notice That Key Change?by Ron Bergthold
How many professional trombonists does it take to change a light bulb? (Answer: None. Professional trombonists can’t afford light bulbs.)
Wrong notes are a fact of life. Though we obviously play more of them when the music is difficult, sometimes we play them when we are distracted or not paying attention. Interestingly, it seems that one wrong note inspires others. And when I start playing a lot of wrong notes, it is often because I missed a key change.
As a brass player, keys with a few flats are easier to play than those with many sharps, but I can adapt to the key of B if I need to. The problem comes when key changes are made often or unexpectedly. Some very good composers use key changes liberally, and as we struggle to continually transition through one of these pieces (and likely play a lot of wrong notes), we tend to question the wisdom and necessity of any key change at all!
Transitions within our lives also seem to raise the frequency and severity of wrong “life notes,” those stressful conflicts that beg for resolution. We immediately recognize that something is not as it should be, but then struggle to know how to fix it. The source of wrong notes may be viewed as good (a new baby), bad (a bout with cancer), or simply different (a new job), but we can always feel the tension or discord. Sometimes, being more at ease with the old key, we decide to continue playing notes comfortable to us, but then hear even more grating sounds result. We begin to suspect that it must just be someone else’s problem, or maybe even a mistake of the arranger. But we really need to check the key!
God is our Master Arranger who writes in a perfect key that is completely aligned with His Word. He lovingly crafts a life score for each of us, intended to teach us who He is and thus to draw us closer to Him. When we become a Christian, we become awakened to this new key and begin a life-long journey towards knowing Him more fully.
2 Corinthians 5:17 describes those in Christ as having become “…a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
Our main peril is the old and much more comfortable key. We try to make sense of the new notes, but in the old key. If we have a disagreement with a coworker or friend, we wonder why we can’t resolve it quickly, even after we read that the love God has for us is patient (1 Corinthians 13:4). We wonder why we always have to keep dealing with the same issues from this person, even after God explains that we should not be keeping a record of those wrongs in the first place (1 Corinthians 13:5). We begin to question why we should even have to put up with this person at all, and thereby completely miss our God-arranged notes of helping that person begin to understand who God is.
Regardless of the source of tensions we experience in life, it is imperative to see if we are in the right key - that is, aligned with His Word. Being imperfect musicians, we will miss some notes along the way, but we will also begin to acquire a new comfort and joy in playing in this wonderful new key. He designed our life not so that we could simply play it easily the first time, but that He would reveal, and we would receive, a portion of His heart with the playing of each new note.
For the TRBC Orchestra on November 25, 2008
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