God’s Word Differences
Have you ever wondered why in the world would God have created humans the way he did? We are all so different and yet the same.
Now I’ve mentioned that I’ve been married to my wife for 38 years now. Let me tell you a little about how different we are.
If I go back to after we started dating, she was a piano major and I was a math major at two different colleges. At the time she was taking a college math class and I offered to come to her house to help her with her homework (which, at the time, I thought was embarrassingly easy but I never told her that…let’s keep that our secret). She practiced her piano playing and that sealed the deal so to speak. I knew very early in our relationship that she was the one I wanted to marry. It took her 3 more years and breaking up with me twice to get to the same place.
It’s the music aspect that I want to explore a little more. You see, my mind works in a very analytical fashion and whenever I try to play music, it’s like a formula. I know that I have to do this when that note shows up while counting the beat. Slower, longer note music is easier for me because it gives me more mental time to apply my formula to get to the next note. I start to fall apart whenever I have to play several short notes in a row because I don’t have enough computational time and when someone suggests I play something with more feeling (I’m working on both of these).
When I heard my wife play that first time, I heard more than just a mechanical process. I felt the music. I envied her ability to play complex music fluidly. I looked forward to us marrying and listening to her play often. In short, as far as music was concerned, she was an expert and I was an amateur at best.
By the time we got married, my wife had switched occupational objectives and suddenly her piano playing became less frequent. She is a wonderful person but let’s say that she has more patience with other people with music than me. Anyway, in the last couple years we’ve had more frequent opportunities to play together. I feel very blessed that we’ve gotten to this point with music together.
Recently, we played a song together that she was very fond of and familiar with but I hadn’t heard before. So this, plus my acceptance that she is the musical expert, resulted in me deferring to whatever she told me. We practiced several times both together (and me separately) but more than 1/2 the time we get off from one another. I assumed it was me (and in a way it was) and I tried very hard to play it according to the notes on the page and the tempo.
She told me that she’d play 4 measures before I came in. In other songs, she takes part of a line from the chorus and plays it as an intro before others join in (I hope I’m not ruining the magic of her performance). In this case, I think she was telling me that she would play the first 4 measures by herself so that I could judge the tempo and then I could come in on the fifth measure. Two radically different implications for where and how I started. I blame myself for not asking for more specificity.
After we presented the song with less than a perfect performance, I was obsessed with figuring out what had gone wrong (wrong may be too strong of a word. Several people told us how nice it sounded so either they were being nice or it ended up sounding good). To her credit, she told me that she was bothered by the performance at first but quickly felt the peace that only God can provide and let it go.
”But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,“
Galatians 5:22 ESV
But more importantly, I hope if she does read this, she understands that these passages apply to me (or actions toward me)…
”Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.“
Ephesians 4:32 ESV
”Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.“
Proverbs 16:24 ESV
”If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.“
Proverbs 18:13 ESV
