IS YOUR HARP IN TUNE?

        David Pavlovich is a professional harpist who has played in hospitals many times, first in the San Francisco bay area and now in Arizona.  He wrote a book, Music In Hospitals, in which he provides many inspirational stories about how music, especially live harp music, aids the healing process.  However, he says, there is this joke about harpists: "We spend half our  lives tuning and the other half playing out of tune.  Its true.  The modern harp is a very delicate instrument. ... Oxygen, gravity, humidity and temperature creation continually affect the tune of the harp" (p 47).

        In biblical terms a hospital full of sick people is like the world we live in, a world full of sick people.  Sin affects all of us to one extent or another.  Like a hospital that includes all ranges of illness, from the barely sick to those near death, the world of sinners includes all kinds of sinners, from compassionate servants like Mother Teresa to genocidal monsters like Adolf Hitler.  As the Bible says, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23).  First John 1:10 puts it more bluntly, "If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar ..."  

        And yet, we humans are part of the creation which Paul says in Romans 1:21 demonstrates "His eternal power and divine nature."  Or as he put it in Eph 1:11-12, we who are chosen and privileged to receive His blessing are chosen explicitly to live "to the praise of his glory."  In other words, God, as the Great Musician, wants to use us as his instruments to play the kind of music that brings Him glory, attracts others to Him and brings healing to the world  Thankfully, He is able to use instruments that are always at least a little out of tune.

        The only person who was ever totally in tune with God's will was Jesus and think of what beautiful music the Great Musician was able to play with him:  the soothing notes of his comforting presence, the challenging music of his teachings, the sad strains of his crucifixion, and the triumphant anthem of his resurrection, all combining to make a world-healing symphony.

        In Revelation 14 there is a picture of heaven where multitudes of the redeemed, thousands and thousands, are standing with the Lamb.  John hears a loud sound.  He listens and then he uses three ways to describe it.  He said it was "... like the sound of many waters, and like the sound of loud thunder, and the sound that I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps."

        Doesn't that vision make you want to keep your harp in tune ... to keep your life in tune with God's will?  We go out of tune so easily.  Today, now, at this table we can listen again to that one whose life was perfectly in tune with God and tune our lives to His.