A Flat E

Last week we had our piano tuned.  It really needed it too.  It had gone a year since its last tuning and had travelled 530 miles in the back of a moving truck.  I suppose it's not surprising that at times you couldn't tell for sure if you were playing Fur Elise or the theme from Phantom of the Opera.

OK.  It wasn't quite that bad, but it definitely needed tuning.

So, in the course of human events, we contacted a piano tuner who came and opened the back of the piano.  He turned various little screws attached to the strings and eventually finished his work and called it good.  On closing the back of our Baldwin, he assembled his tools and drove on to tune another piano in need.

All was well.  At least it was well until our children began to practice their pieces that evening at which point we discovered that the high 'E' an octave above Middle C was seriously flat.  It wasn't flat enough to be an E flat, but it was off enough that the sound was quite jarring.

All the other notes were perfect, but it is amazing how many songs have an E in them.

Of course, all was not lost.  A quick call to the tuner and a day or two later even that E was back in tune.

As I played a few pieces before the final tuning was complete, I was struck by how much of a difference having a single note off makes.  It isn't enough that you can't recognize pieces, but it is enough that you can tell something is wrong.

It strikes me that this is what having a life without Jesus is like.  It may feel almost perfect in every respect and still there is something that rings untrue, a chord which falls flat.

Humans hear the discordance, but instead of fixing the note that is absent, they try to tune all of the other notes to try to make the discordant note sound OK.  People hide the flat 'E' amongst a bunch of other flat notes and everything is still just not right.

In the end there is only one thing that can fix a life that is out of tune -- Jesus presence within it.  As the notes come into tune, finally, the melody of life will become beautiful.

Focusing on the Right Thing

"Time for some coffee," I though as I poured water into the back of our Keurig. 

It was breakfast time and I stepped away and began making a couple of slices of toast.  For some reason or other, this is my typical breakfast -- one cup of coffee and two slices of toast.

I heard the Keurig kick on and could smell the aroma of coffee coming from it.  It seemed to smell extra good this morning.

I finished buttering my toast and stepped over to the coffee maker to claim my mug.  My coffee cup stood forlornly beside the Keurig, while around it stretched a small pond of coffee. 

I'd forgotten to put my mug into the Keurig and so my beautiful coffee had gone everywhere except into my cup.

I suppose the issue is that I was distracted.  I was thinking about toast and butter and jelly.  I was thinking about all of the patients I would be taking care of later that day.  The one thing I wasn't focused on was actually making coffee.

I think all of us have mental lapses at times.  They aren't intended, but if we were just paying a little more attention to the activity at hand, they wouldn't happen either.

In the Gospels, the story is told of Jesus walking on the water in a storm on the Sea of Galilee.  The Apostle Peter saw Jesus and asked if he too could walk on the water.  Jesus told him to come and so he stepped out of the boat -- a very brave thing to do. 

Matthew tells us of Peter, "But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, 'Lord save me.'"  Of course, Jesus stretched out His hand and helped him into the boat.

The lesson is clear.  Every one of us is focusing on something, just some times it isn't the thing we really should be concentrating on.  Peter was paying far too much attention to the wind and the waves and not nearly enough to the Savior who walking to him across the water.  I'm not very much different.

More than anything else, our focus needs to be on Jesus.  With our eyes on Him we can weather any storm -- even the clean up process of a whole cup of coffee all over a kitchen counter.

A New Year

Today is Christmas Day.  That means that in one week it will be New Year's Day.  It always seems to work that way, even in Leap Year.  I guess the beauty of calendars and math and all that.

I suppose the emphasis in the phrase "New Year's Day" is on the word "new."  A year is the way we mark how long it takes this earth to orbit all the way around the sun (that is if you belong to the Copernicus view of things) and a day is how long it takes the earth to spin all the way around on its axis (assuming, once again, that you don't subscribe to the whole flat earth thing).  Depending on one's age, we have seen a few or, many days and years go by.

It is the new part that speaks to us.  A blank sheet of paper is an opportunity.  It could be a letter, or an essay, or just some doodles, but it is fresh potential, just waiting to be written on.

A field of freshly fallen snow is a blank slate.  Later, animals will track across it and children will heap the snow up to make fortresses, snow angels, and snow men, but till then, it is only potential.

So it is with 2018. 

2018 is potential for both good and evil, blessing and cursing.  What will I do with it?  I don't know.

What I do know is that life is not lived by the year or even by the day.  Life is lived by the moment.

The only way to be satisfied at the end of 2018 is to be certain that everyone of its 365 days worth of moments is lived for God.