Lately, I’ve been choosing colors for the walls in my house, and painting. To my dismay the colors often look different on the wall than they do on the color chip because of the lighting. Last week I repainted one entire room three different times before I found a color in all variations of morning, noon, and night that I liked seeing on all walls! Now that I have a color fan displaying hundreds of colors organized according to the color wheel, recognizing a color is a lot easier than before because it serves as a point of reference. Before, the color seemed to look different depending upon what I held it up next to, but now I can hold up a paint chip from any store and compare it with the color fan to determine what I am really looking at. Music is a lot like colors too.
When I teach music I often reach for the tuner and use it as a point of reference to help train my student’s ears to hear when they are playing sharp or flat. Without perfect pitch, a note is just a note, but in a scale it needs to have certain distances between other notes in order to be in tune. As a result of comparing their sound with a tuner my students are more likely to be aware of their pitch tendencies and to play better in tune. Today I was thinking how life is like colors and music.
We need a reference point in order to know what condition we are in, where we are, and where we are going. The dictionary isn’t good enough because language keeps changing. Tradition isn’t good enough, (why do we do things this way instead of that way?) And of course there are so many religions out there to choose from. Some look better than others depending upon your criteria and what you are comparing it to.
The Bible is the only reference point that I know of which I can truly believe is not made up by another human who started a religion a long time ago from his/her own cultural relevancy. Sure, we learn about past cultures from reading the Bible, but the message of the Bible is cross-cultural and applies just as much today as it did when Jesus walked the earth.
I am in awe whenever I think of the Bible. It tells of a perfect, all-powerful God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We learn that God is our standard, and through the law we learn just how unobtainable that standard is! We also learn that Jesus is our redeemer. It tells an amazing story of a God who desires to buy back His beloved creation (you and me) that He might enjoy fellowship now and forever someday in a new and perfect world where there is no sin with those who freely choose to serve and worship God.
It seems an unbelievable story. In fact, I have often thought that I would not believe any of this if it wasn’t for God’s own work, power, and grace in my own personal life, but by the grace of God and His powerful Word I am made a new creature, and I’m walking to a different drumbeat because Christ is my master now. The best part is that I’m destined for a life with God someday, and in the meantime being changed and transformed little by little with the help of the Holy Spirit.
It doesn’t take long for things to go out of style or out of date, but God’s Word applies to us whenever and wherever we are, and the Bible is that much needed point of reference for our life. God is our standard, Jesus is our redeemer, and the Holy Spirit is our helper.
Thanks for the great blog, insight, and encouargement! You are so right. God’s Word is so precious, helpful, and absolutely reliable. Therefore, we should measure our lives to it and the God who wrote it before we look to others to see if we are “measuring” up.
YOu said, “It seems an unbelievable story. In fact, I have often thought that I would not believe any of this if it wasn’t for God’s own work, power, and grace in my own personal life, but by the grace of God and His powerful Word I am made a new creature, and I’m walking to a different drumbeat because Christ is my master now.” That is so true.
Again, thanks for the blog, insight, and encouragement!!