Maestro, The Podium Is Yours!

[HKHaugan]

Maestro, the Podium is Yours!

It’s concert time and you have anticipated hearing the announced symphony. As you enter the concert hall ushers give you the general outline of the evening's program. The musicians are tuning their instruments, the audience wrapt in multiple conversations, each oblivious to the sounds of the other. As the mingling increases, the musicians in their pre-performance mode, the patrons locked in the moment of non-purpose, a kind of holding pattern takes place. Their real purpose for being there will emerge momentarily. Soon music will find its way into their expectancy. The massive sound of the pre-concert setting is jumbled and intense.

True, the audience is there for the symphony but, like all visible occasions does it all have a deeper meaning, a spiritual meaning? Could it possibly give us a microcosm of our world experience? Those pre-concert moments in a sense, are reflective of the world around us, individuals totally submerged in their own personal world. Anticipation, looking forward, hoping to experience a promised pleasure, everyone, like musicians, tuning their minds, hearts and spirits, locked in a personal and separate world. The one common bond is hope. Hope that the conductor will arrive, that the symphony will be played and that the experience will be glorious.

Then, like out of the blue, comes the sound of tapping. The concertmaster, usually the one known as the first violin, stands up, taps his bow on his music stand, calls the musicians together and gets them to tune to a specific note, the unity note, the note he strikes on his violin, that enables the orchestra to play together. His task is to prepare the orchestra for the entrance of the conductor who will lead the concert.

The audience, lost in individual conversation suddenly becomes unified. All eyes turn to the right or left side of the stage awaiting the conductor. As he enters there is the usual applause. He takes his place at the podium, all eyes, audience and musicians, instruments at the ready, are focused on him. A hushed silence awaits his first wave. With a momentary and suspenseful pause he raises his baton high. Then his quick down stroke and the concert begins as the director brings the musicians and the audience into the courts of the composer’s mind and heart.

Switch the scene into its spiritual parallel. What is the world, who is the concertmaster, who are the musicians and who is the assembled audience? For whom are we playing the instrument with which we were born, our image of God, our combined mind, heart and body? Who is the composer of the music we have submitted to, who is the concertmaster and what key is he getting us to play in? Why was the music written? Are we the musicians or the crowd or both? Finally, the director leading us, who is he? What courts is he bringing us into? Is the music score accessible? What questions does this scene raise for you?

Perhaps the answers can begin with a couple of passages from John's Gospel: “There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John...He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that that through him all men might believe. He was not that light; he came only as a witness to the light (John 1:6-8).”

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust in me also. There are many rooms in my Father's house. If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am (John 14:1-3).”

Let's expand on those passages and adapt them to our own individual lives. This paralleling is an exercise in building our testimony, our witness and fine tuning our instrument. The Lord has invited us into His house so, Maestro, the podium is yours!

“Enter His gates with thanksgiving and come into His courts with praise (Ps.100:4).”