The Upload
Posted on Mar 20, 2015 by
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you have had a blessed week!
I did my undergraduate work at the University of the Pacific where I majored in Business Administration. UOP had a great School of Business, but of all the schools that comprised the whole university, one of the most famous of the schools was the Conservatory of Music. Students from all over the world came to this school to study music. There were students studying vocal music, instrumental music, music theory, and much more. On any given Friday or Saturday evening, you could attend a concert at the Conservatory that was incredible.
I was amazed at the talent of those students. But shortly after I started at UOP, I began working for the student-counseling center, which had its offices directly across the walkway from the Conservatory practice hall. The practice hall was a huge building filled with small, soundproof rooms that the students could use to practice their music. But the building was not air-conditioned, and so on warm days, which was quite often in Stockton, California, the students would open the windows of their rooms as they practiced. The sounds coming out of those rooms were unbelievable; oftentimes, it didn’t seem like anyone was playing or singing anything worth listening to, it was just a bunch of sounds that often gave me a headache, but then on those concert nights, the music was really beautiful! Listening to all those incredible musicians that first year at UOP, I learned that if you want to be good at something, anything, it takes lots and lots of practice. And oftentimes, it takes making many mistakes before one really gets it right.
I thought about this idea of practicing to be good when I read our Old Testament text from Jeremiah for this coming Sunday (Jeremiah 31:31-34). In this text, God says, through the prophet, Jeremiah that he will make a new covenant with his people, and then specifically says, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest…” (31:33-34).
How does God’s covenant get written on our hearts, I wondered? How does one learn to follow Jesus, to live life by Jesus' “Great Commandments” or to serve Jesus as he calls us to do? Well, this seems to me that to be able to attain this one must practice these things over and over. Just like learning to be a great singer or playing a musical instrument, to have these things placed on our hearts so that we might live them naturally, we must be willing to practice God’s ways, even if they sometimes seems, too, hard. We must be willing to fail at it and even, at times, sound really bad, but all the time knowing we are learning to be better, and that as we practice God is placing his ways on our hearts.
All too often, I think we Christians think that just because we are Christians, we already know everything we need to know, but the truth is, to really know God and to really have his covenant placed on our hearts, we need to be constantly practicing how we love God and how we love our neighbor.
As we slowly journey toward the cross this season of Lent, I pray that each of us is continuing to practice our faith so that it might truly be written on our hearts.
Have a blessed week.
Shalom,
Pastor Dave