My son Joshua plays the guitar (sometimes lead, sometimes bass) for his church’s music team. As a proud father, I always enjoy watching and listening as he performs, and I take no small degree of satisfaction in knowing that I gave him his first guitar lessons. Of course, he has far surpassed my knowledge and talent with regard to the guitar; I now ask him to teach me some of the things he has learned! Nevertheless, I can still tune his guitars when necessary; it’s one of the first things I learned with I was a young guitar student. Guitar strings tend to naturally stretch out of tune due to frequent playing, long periods without use, or even weather conditions. Tuning a guitar can be a tedious task, and yet it is necessary before an instrument can make beautiful music.
In Christian Maturity, E. Stanley Jones tells of asking a piano tuner how he did his work. The tuner said that the middle C wire was used as standard. Middle C was put in perfect tune through a tuning fork, and then all the wires on each side of it were tuned to it. Jones goes on to state, “Jesus is that Middle C note. He is standard. Everything in heaven and on earth not attuned to Him is out of tune.”
In the words of the apostle Paul in Colossians 1.15-20:
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Life today can stretch us to our limits; indeed, it can stretch us “out of tune” with ourselves, with others, and, most importantly, with God. The season of Lent is a time to remember and respond to the fact that God’s perfect pitch for life can be seen and heard in the “Middle C” of Jesus Christ. When we are attuned to Him in faith as Lord of our lives, our elements of disharmony come into harmony and our lives make beautiful music by His grace. May this season leading to the celebration of Holy Week be an opportunity to “tune up” to Jesus as the perfect “Middle C.”
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