P52: Music Monday

Recent Fascination: 

I've been a little overwhelmed recently by a fascination with lyrics, story, and music.  It all started on Friday night after some friends and I attended a small concert of a new-to-me folk-pop husband and wife duo, The Gray Havens.  Their music was fun and whimsical, combining deep and clever lyrics with sweet and unusual melodies.  During the concert, they shared the goal of writing story in music to share deep truths and make realities easier to understand.  

Which, by the way, if you've never heard or checked out music by The Gray Havens, do it today!  

With this recent fascination, I've been playing many primitive lines and phrases through my head and singing them in my own way.  It's been a fun exercise; although I have a lot of work to do to create a "good" song!  One of the challenges comes from my need to expand my vocabulary with words that express thoughts and colors and sounds and feelings and pictures.  Another comes from reading and learning new, and re-learning old, ways of communicating truth presented in books, especially Scripture.  And maybe one of these weeks, I'll publish an "original"; but for the moment, I will spare you all!     

The Power of Song:

I remember having long conversations growing up and while Bible college about the significance of music and rhythm and harmony.  Does music have power?  Is it amoral?  Is there an absolute standard of musical style in Scripture?  What should we be listening too?  Does it matter?  Can you listen to music simply to enjoy it or will it subconsciously effect you?  How quickly can music affect you?  And so on... 

Though it is an interesting conversation, as I've been growing in my walk with the Lord, it isn't as much of a question.  I've realized that music does indeed effect the things I think about or contemplate.  If I am struggling with something, some genres of music actually do more to stimulate lies in my brain.  Or when I'm discouraged, other music is like a balm to my weary soul.  

I was actually laughing to myself this weekend as I was traveling by myself to visit some friends.  I grabbed a bunch of CD's to help the trip go faster (a.k.a. keep me awake).  One of them was labeled, "It's a Sunny Day", and since it was a sunny day, I popped it into the player.  Of the 19 songs on the CD, at least 80% of them were melancholy love/break-up/sappy songs.  Yes, I laughed too; so much for sunshine!  However, I did smile at the memories that came flooding back with each "sunny" song; those were almost enough to make the label accurate!  

Knowing my own sinful heart--prone to wander, Lord I feel it--I'm noticing how much care needs to be taken with what I feed my mind.  Call this an elementary, Christian-living principle, but taken at the ground-level-practical-life stage it looks like making choices to listen to things that glorify God and reflect the beauty of His character and creation.  

Jesus explained this in Mark 7, as He was talking to a group of people and Pharisees. 

He said, "And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand:  There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable.  And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)  And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.  All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."