More Than We See

A guest blog / short devotion from former (recently moved) member, Shawn Blythe:

I recently attended a classical guitar concert featuring an award-winning classical guitarist with international experience and accolades (Leonela Alejandro).  She played a piece written by a world-renowned composer, who composed several hundred musical works, nearly one hundred move musical scores and wrote twenty books (Toru Takemitsu).  The musical piece Alejandro selected was composition well known within the classical guitar world and is celebrated for its ability to utilize untraditional harmony, form and silence to create a unified piece of music (Equinox).

As I listened to Alejandro play Equinox, I was struck by the unmistakable expertise of the musician.  She was clearly a talented and gifted guitarist.  However, despite this talent the music of Equinox was, for me, an uncomfortable collection of seemingly unrelated notes with occasional periods of silence as if the composer had lost his train of thought for a stanza or two, or perhaps the guitarist had forgotten what came next.  As a guitar neophyte, I fruitlessly searched for a rhythm to the piece or some melody to which I could build some semblance of order from the chaotic notes reaching my ears.  When it was over, the audience erupted into enthusiastic and sincere appreciative applause while I sat wondering what I had missed.

This scene caused me to consider the times in my own life when I am surrounded by people who know more than I do, and who seem to appreciate things that I don’t understand.  One glaring example of this situation is my continual struggle with understanding things of the spiritual world, and more specifically what God is doing in my life at any particular point in time.

There are times when events and circumstances seem disconnected, ill-timed and the clarity of God’s guidance is seemingly absent for long periods of time.  I consider and judge the merits of the spiritual realities of my life based on an earthly, childlike understanding of the things of God.  And while I sit confused, God takes a bow and all the heavenly host applaud at the wonderful things that God is doing in my life.

My inability to appreciate the value of Equinox has nothing to do with the artist who performed it, the composer of the musical score or the music itself.  It clearly has to do with my inability to understand or appreciate the complexities and nuances of classical guitar music.  Takemitsu himself describes his music as being “composed as if fragments were thrown together unstructured, as in dreams. You go to a far place and suddenly find yourself back home without having noticed the return.”    I was ill-equipped for that journey.

I would like to think that I am slightly better equipped for my spiritual journey through this life, but experience would indicate otherwise.  It seems that I am in constant need of God reminding me that there is more to this life than what I can understand or appreciate. 

I am eternally grateful for that fact, as well as for those brief moments when God opens my eyes and I immediately understand that what I can see is not all there is to see (II Kings 6:17).