The Memory of Something Lost

As I sit here on this comfortable couch and listen to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, I can't help but reflect upon the beauty and longings such music instills in the human soul.  Sound tracks are unique because they not only bring you along in musical anthem, but also in image.  The music portrays an image of brilliance.  And, knowing the L.O.T.R. movies and books well, I am captivated by such images.


I love this scene.  Light breaking through the darkness

I often think of mathematics as God's order, expressed in creation.  As we dive into angles, postulates, theorems, graphs, numbers, and equations, we can be awe-instilled at the order that has been inscribed into material things.  Music is similar, but more powerful.  Music is orderly, like math, but goes deeper than the intellectual and material.  It has its home in the unspeakable "ness" of the soul.  Joanna and I went to a concert over a year ago, and as I fell struck by the harmony and rhythm and dance of an Irish band, I couldn't help but sense in my inner depth a "longing".  I thought first, "I wish I could play that instrument or dance that beautifully."  But I realized that the one who does play and dance is only the shadow of the richer essence of the song.  Having played music, it seems the only way to satisfy such longing is to become the song itself!  Maybe when God breathed life into Man, He also breathed in us a song.  It seems our breath (the life he breathed) rarely reminds us of God, who is its origin.  But always, when certain music comes along, there is memory of something lost, of something needed, of something longed for.  It awakens in our soul a captivating image of identity in need of grasping.

Such experiences can easily leave one disappointed due to the dry and thirsty mouth that lays in want for a quenching drink.  Nevertheless I am left with this:  If there is one correspondance that these senses relate to, it's the fact that we were made by God, who has made us in His Image and who has and will bring us, who believe, that quenching drink.


Scenes like this (Taken near the valley of our future Central Asian home) also instill longing...

PS:
(Needless to say I am writing about a subjective issue.  Nevertheless thinking of such "normal" things can grow in us deeper devotion as we go about our everyday routine.  All of life is sacred because God is the creator.  We must not cut away part of our lives and claiming them as specially holy to God.  All life can be an offering of devotion.  As God brings us along the pathway leading to Central Asia, I hope nobody ever assumes this work a more acceptable or spiritual task than the one who is a cook, janitor, policeman, doctor, mother, father, etc.  We are no better or closer to God than the faithful man or woman who works in corporate America.  Our work is vitally important, don't get me wrong, but because of it, we aren't more acceptable and beautiful to God.)