Acts 17

So now Paul is on his way. If you didn't catch what happened, read chapter 16. If your brain is half way on while you read, I think you'll find it pretty cool. But anyway, Paul is on his way. He comes to a new city and goes into the temple. Remember now, this is Paul...this is Saul, formerly. He was the police of the Christians...he made sure there weren't any. Everyone knew who he was. It would be, in many ways, similar to Osama Bin Laden hanging out at the capitol building. And what was Paul doing? Debating with the Jews about the validity of Jesus as the Son of God! So Osama is not only at the capitol building, but while he's there he's trying to pass bills to prevent terrorism! Paul is doing the exact opposite of what everyone was afraid of him for. First he kills off Christians, now he persuades them!
Now interestingly, the Bible gives us a poll of those who decided to follow Christ:
*Uneducated outcasts: Multitude
*Educated Jews: some
*Leading women: not just a few (woot! woot! for the ladies, representin' in scriptures!)
Hmmm...someone else had similar numbers as His following...now who was that??? That's right! It was Jesus. As it turns out, the people who are most confident in themselves tend to be the ones who don't feel comfortable giving control to "God." They would rather just do without. It's the people who feel like they don't have control who are more willing to give everything they have to a God who loves them. Case in point: the aftermath of 9/11! People feel completely unsafe and unsure and *PRESTO!* the church pews are full.
Another, more general example: take a magnet and some paper clips to a tribe of uncivilized people and they will think you're a God (okay, it's an exaggeration, but follow...). Take the same objects to a high school and they will explain how magnetic forces work and why it's NOT God. I'm gonna have to side with the tribe on this one. It is God who makes magnetic work. When He wants them to, they don't work. We would call that a miracle, but I think it's a miracle that He indeed keeps them working in a predictable fashion and still has time to oversee all the other "Laws of Nature" and answer my prayers. Yes, magnets are a miracle, just like gravity, just like light, and just like Paul and Silas being freed. Study them and learn how to calculate them, so you can use these miracles to invent new things and make your heavenly daddy proud, but never cease to be amazed at the faithful miracles of God.
One last lesson, from which I have strayed: don't worry about being able to debate about God. Paul was perhaps the greatest religious debater ever. He spent three weeks with educated theologians (Acts 17:2) and very few of them decided for Christ. However, he showed love for a jailer in Act 16, and he and his whole family were won to Christ on the spot - no debating, no arguing. You've been called, time and time again, to love others. Nowhere does Jesus call for you to debate with non-Christians.

On a quote

"The highest mission of music is to serve as a link between God and men (and women). It builds a bridge over which angelic hosts can come closer to mankind."

The highest (and really, the only) mission of man is to serve God. To those whom He has given the blessing and burden of being musical, their service must be embodied in music. Similarly, to those whom He has given the blessing and burden of architectural talents, their service must be embodied in their architecture (To whom much is given, much is required). So, it's not really a matter of what music does, but what a musician does.
I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with the content of the given quote as much as with the emphasis. The author makes it sound like music is something special; something that does what nothing else can. Perhaps when we no longer see through the glass dimly and are united with Christ, or perhaps when I just learn more, I will see that to be completely true. Until then, my experience is that music is simply a tool God has given to man to experience communication. Granted, He has given more of this particular tool to some than to others, but the purpose does not change at all. Different people appreciate expressions of these tools to different degrees. For example, I know nearly nothing about architecture, but I still feel some awe when looking at huge structures or intricate and complex buildings. I fully expect that my appreciation for that building comes no where close to that of the original designer. That doesn't keep me from hearing something beautiful expressed through it.
Conversely, there have been times I was completely in awe of some thing for which I had no ability to comprehend its complexity: a piece of art, an electrical schematic, or the inner workings of a large machine or small computer. I have often been embarrassed by the nonchalant response of a more knowledgeable person when beholding the very same thing: “That’s no big deal. I used to make those as a warm-up each day before I really went to work.”
The thing spoke greatly to me of magnificence. I hope that in those situations I would attribute that magnificence to the working and evidence of God. When thinking of God and His workings, nothing should ever be allowed to diminish our awe before Him (education being one of the greatest culprits). We should always keep our initial respect, and, as the Bible puts appropriately puts it, “fear” before God. Never should we allow longevity of experience and education to push the fear of God from our forefront as if God were a magician and we could learn how He does His tricks. I say this to prevent misunderstanding about the following statement: a professional, educated in a particular field, should be the expert in the function of his or her trade. Being a person on that path, it seems so far that music is not something special; something that does what nothing else can.
For a number of years I worked as a janitor at a church, and found myself some days being quite excited about the “art” of cleaning. I washed the windows until they sparkled and nearly found pleasure in watching someone run straight into a window because it was so clean that they didn’t even recognize its presence. It may sound odd to you, but as I left the bathrooms some late nights, I would look back and see the beautiful job I had done and feel a sense of pride of my nearly artistic masterpiece. I’m sure if you took the time, you would find you have had the same feeling about some task you’ve had to complete in an area of personal responsibility. Of course, there were also days – the majority of the days – where I did not particularly enjoy the act of cleaning others’ messes. Yet, on the days of drudgery that God blessed me with more grace and allowed some of His character to show through, I may have done the same quality of job as if I had been enjoying it, but it was not nearly as fun. For me, music has been nearly the same, just cleaner. I have the option of doing it with the recognition that God is indeed watching me and is hoping to be pleased, in which case it is an act of “service” (to be used interchangeably with “worship” (“…this is your spiritual act of worship”). I also have the choice to do it monotonously as an occupation, in which case it is no more a link between me and God than any other act, regardless of the beauty of the product.
There is one major difference between the janitor job and the music jobs I have: I feel much more compelled, a much deeper urging to become a great musician than I do to be a great window cleaner. I don’t think that superiority of that force necessarily comes from any superiority music would have over cleaning, (in fact, there seems to be sufficient Biblical evidence that a cleaning job is even superior in heavenly value than a musical job), but now I refer back to the blessing and burden of which I originally spoke. To accomplish this most poetically, I defer to C.S. Lewis (While I wholly disagree with some of his theology, I find his approach creative and expressive, allowing me to love what I agree with and quite despise what I don’t). In fact, now that I read it again, I think it states what I have already tried to explain:

“There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all you life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw – but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realize that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of – something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side? Are no all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for?...This signature on each soul may be a product of heredity and environment, but that only means that heredity and environment are among the instruments whereby God creates a soul…He makes each soul unique…All that you are, sins apart, is destined, if you will let God have His good way, to utter satisfaction…Your place in heaven wil seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it – made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.”
-Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis, chapter 10

There is a quote I saw quite some time ago, and I have tried desperately to track down, because it was the beginning of my thinking artistically about music and its effect on me. I think it was by Igor Stravinsky and it said something to the effect of, “…make the salary of the musician less; the reward of the artist void of fame or social stature. Then, only those compelled by the possession of that demon will continue in artistic pursuit.” No doubt I am completely butchering the quote, but the important concept is hopefully still there: there are people with an inexplicable desire to attain to art, and those people will do it at any cost. When they find it, the reward is more fulfilling than all other rewards. This is also what makes it a burden. Until that thing or things are found, nothing else will do and nothing else can ever take the place of that thing.
This feeling (though I fear to call it a feeling in these days since a feeling is less scientific and thus, less accepted as legitimate than a “knowledge” gained from experiment on atoms) is one of the things that will always compel me to believe there is something else fantastic, ominous, and deserving of awe - something more real and of such greater substance than myself, my occupations, or even my music. I am almost playing along with another song that was playing long before I started and needs me not. It will undoubtedly continue without me, and there is less than nothing I could do to stop it or even soften it for those who can hear it. It’s how I am told how small I really am. For me, music is not really even so much about how we communicate with God as how God communicates with us.

Acts 16 (written by Luke)

So this isn't like the coloring pages from Sunday school at all! In Sunday school, Paul and sombody else are in prison. They sing praise and worship songs, there's an earthquake, the wall cracks so there's a big escape route, and before they leave, they tell the gaurd about Jesus.
Here's what actually happens: Paul and Silas are out preaching and they're being heckled by a demon-possessed girl. The girl happens to be racking up quite a little bank account with her little demon by telling the future. Unfortunately for her, she's basically a slave, and all the money goes to her owners. When Paul gets really fed up with her heckling, he spins around, looks her in the face, and casts out the demon. She may be just fine with all that, but her owners get pretty ticked off - I'm sure you can see why. The owners drag Paul and Silas to the police and tell them that Paul and Silas have been breaking the Roman law and tradition. With no further explanation, the police immediately give them a severe and naked beating and imprison them...no trial. That's illegal! They tell the gaurd to be sure Paul and Silas don't get away, so the gaurd decides the best thing to do is to stick them in the inner chamber, deep in the prison.
NOW, we get part of the Sunday school page: Paul and Silas start singing hymns, but they are also praying. What sticks out to me is that the Bible says the other prisoners were listening! Not exactly what you'd expect from a bunch of thugs off the street. Must have been an interesting night for the jailer, who's used to hearing screaming, complaints, moaning, and probably crying. Tonight: a duet of "Great is Thy Faithfulness" with individual prayer time between verses!
The earthquake comes, but there's no hole in the wall. Instead, the doors fling open. They don't break off the hinges from the quake - they "suddendly fly open." This was God. The shackles were not broken off of Paul and Silas; listen to this: "everybody's chains became loose"!!!! Became loose?!?! Became loose?!?! EVERYONE'S chains just BECOME LOOSE! And the doors have flown open! The jailer knows Someone big is involved and the jailer is in His way. He takes out his sword, and Paul stops him. "No one is leaving! Chill out!" The jailer takes a look around and finds all the prisoners there. (I have no idea how Paul and Silas convinced everyone to stay, but if I were another prisoner, I would have pushed them out of the way to leave through the flung-open door!) The jailer is probably messed up in his head, trying to take it all in. He gets saved, and apparently goes and gets his family (really, how much good is he anyway? The prisoners are all free and the door is wide open. If they want to leave, they're leaving). They get saved, and everyone has a sleep-over at the jail! The next morning the jailer gets word to let Paul and Silas go. They refuse! They said, "No way! We're Roman citizens, and they beat us and imprisoned us without a fair trial, and now they want us to pretend like it never happened and just go away? Tell them we're not leaving without making a fuss!" Oops! The police hadn't checked out the story or even asked them for their I.D.! Then...read it for yourself - Acts 16:39 is where it picks up.

Welcome to Bogger

Congratulations to my beautiful class! I hope you enjoy this project!