The Tune

"God is speaking through the music…" (Kevin Prosch, Come To The Light) "Once, there was a Tune and everybody knew how it went. But as time went on, people began to forget, until at last no-one could remember…" (Larry Norman, The Tune)

I have often found that one of the more common ways I hear what God is saying to me – on a personal journey, ongoing sanctification level – is through the music that I am listening to, or even just overhearing.

The thought occurred to me this morning as I sat in a worship service in a local church. In the (generally helpful) corrective of recent years that has boldly stated: "Worship is not just singing", sometimes we run the risk of missing out on a very vibrant part of corporate worship. Music and melody-making is the spontaneous – dare I say normal – response of most of humanity, from joyful songs of celebration to mournful laments (the "blues"). There's something in everyone that resonates with musical expression, regardless of whether they have training or talent or not.

When I was going through my most extreme season of detoxing from church, one day I found myself listening to an old Delirious? cd, and suddenly realizing that something within me was eagerly responding to the worship.

Some years later, during another difficult transition, I was at a Delirious? concert in Chicago, and felt the Lord was aiming the song Every Little Thing's Gonna Be Alright right at me. And I was greatly encouraged and built up in my faith as The TuneMaster spoke through The Tune.

During our first faith-steps as full-time, supported-by-others missionaries in YWAM, I remember driving somewhere, and listening to Petra's end-of-career live album Farewell. And a song that had been previously unknown to me suddenly jumped out as the chorus played: "you're in the right place, trusting only Him…", which made me also recall the Delirious? song from a few years earlier. And again, The TuneMaster spoke to me through The Tune.

For me, as a musician and sometime worship leader/backing musician, the reminder that worship is far more than just singing is a balancing corrective to those who would simply spend all their time seeking the latest and greatest "worship experiences" (once referred to as "evangelical liver shiver"). But in the interest of not seeing the pendulum swing to an equally unbalanced extreme, let me say that there's just something about the power of The Tune: music, melody, lyrics – and The TuneMaster's creative presence in the midst of it all – that is winsome, inviting, and nourishing to the soul.