No Small Transformations

OK, so I'm at worship rehearsal tonight. Communion weekend = mellower tunes. In the set is the song "You Alone."

I must be honest. I'm sick of this song. I realize I may be angering my beloved friends who totally adore this tune, but there it is. We've been doing it since the first Passion CD came out in '98, and it is a very VERY rare song at our church that has a seven-year shelf life. The song seems to have lost its vitality for me and faded into the realm of the happy, Christianese elevator worship stacked with repetitive platitudes that seem to slap a nice, pretty, Jesus-y bandaid on the gaping wounds of the world.

Then Matt commented that he'd played this song fast and slow, rocky and mellow -- he'd even played it in the minor key. I remembered that. I thought about it for a sec, and tears started to well up and I said something like "Oh, could we?" So we are. And I am blessed. What's the difference, you ask? Good question. Most people won't even notice the difference, but here's what it does for me.

It sets me up in a different place. The guitar intro in the minor key cuts right to my spiritual poverty -- my utter begging dependence on God for anything resembling joy or meaning. Instead of tromping around in the major-key musical boots of the hyper-spiritual, oblivious Jesus-freak, I finally get to be barefoot and broken -- a child of God who needs to hear and say and mean these words in order to stay in the countless, often gratuitous battles of life:

"You are the only one I need. I bow all of me at your feet. I worship You alone. You have given me more than I could ever have wanted, and I want to give You my heart and my soul. You alone are Father, and You alone are good. You alone are Saviour, and You alone are God."

YOU are God. Not me. Not any of the voices that shout into my life from my peers or my empty checkbook or the blasted idiot-box TV I should've thrown out months ago. The minor key (a really small change) seems to throw the lyrics into sharp relief, as if to say:"Yes, life is hard. Yes, it's OK to be tired and wounded and worn. BUT... These words are -- this GOD is -- still true anyway." Where singing these words in the major key feels like work -- like I need to actively beat down the tiny little gods that have huge voices -- in the minor key, the lyrics flow out of me like truth, like rest, like a desperately needed and clung-to lifeline. Repeats feel like clinging. Like this is all I need to know and God will accomplish the rest. And that tastes like hope.

So by the time we switch to the major key for the "I'm alive" section, I've remembered why so many of the beloveds' hands go up at that point. The verses have convinced me again that life is gift and joy and freedom when it's all about God -- hard, frustrating, often painful, but gift nonetheless.

Of course I realize (Jan, Judy, Lisa...) that these reflections say far more about me than they do about the relative merits of any particular key signature. But I'm OK with that. I just pray that the changes -- the minor adjustments -- God is making in my own life and heart have equal or greater significance.

"God's business is putting things right;
he loves getting the lines straight,
Setting us straight. Once we're standing tall,
we can look him straight in the eye."
--Psalm 11:7, msg.

There are no small transformations.