Click above to listen to Awaken the Dawn as you read. This track version is from 2009 Best Holiday Album December Peace (ZMR Awards, winning over Enya and Yo-Yo Ma). If you enjoy, please consider sampling and ordering the CD, MP3 Album or sheet music. You can also listen and download on iTunes and all other digital outlets.
This story is from 31 Days of December Peace (soft cover or eBook). Also available from Amazon Kindle, iTunes, and other e-Readers.
Where could you use some “December Peace” today?
The Soundtrack of Peace ~ by Chris Fabry, chrisfabry.com (Copyright 2012, Chris Fabry, not to be re-published without permission)
As a writer, I use music to wash over me, creating moods and an environment that fuels creativity. When I wrote the Left Behind: The Kids series with Jerry Jenkins and Dr. Tim LaHaye, Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman felt like friends. Writing Almost Heaven was an exercise in mandolins and guitars and bluegrass.
There is a soundtrack to our lives, our stories, as real as those we hear in films. It’s up to us to listen. We can drown the notes with other pursuits, other music that crowds it out, but it is there, running through our lives every day.
At this busy, hustle-bustle time of year, the Good News is all around us, but you have to listen carefully to hear the soundtrack over the 24 hour news cycle. If you lean even closer, you can hear that same soundtrack running through your own life.
I choose to rest in a sovereign God who made everything seen and unseen. I choose to believe there is more going on than I understand. Looking back, I see the intricately woven story of redemption as the soundtrack playing behind the man and woman choosing to eat. I hear the minor chords as men sell their brother into slavery and watch that evil become their salvation. When all seems lost, the waters part and a path is hewn where none existed. Promised Land ahead, people stumble over their wayward hearts as prophets, priests, and kings rise and fall. A Wonderful Counselor is promised. A Mighty God will appear. A Suffering Servant.
Sometimes I think the soundtrack of my life is the B side of an old garage sale reject. It’s haphazard and scratched and almost unintelligible. I envision God watching human history and shaking his head. Then, with a snap, he awakens with the spark of an idea. A way to redeem he hadn’t considered.
God is not like this.
The cross was not his fallback plan. God chose the manger that cradled the infant head of his Son. Every bit of straw, every animal in that dirty cave, every shepherd that came running, every angel that sang his song was chosen. Every footstep toward Golgotha, each nail, each thorn on the crown. Every Roman guard pressed into service. The tomb that couldn’t hold him. The stone that rolled away.
And you.
The sovereign God who made you wants you to hear this soundtrack, not to figure out how he scored the music. This is not a musical puzzle. He asks you to surrender to his music. He is playing the notes behind the pain and struggle of your life. You can participate. You can fight against him or abandon yourself to the ebb and flow that began creation’s song.
The soundtrack of peace is the love of God. This crimson melody runs through history’s landscape and the crags of your life.
May the music haunt you today and give you peace. May you hear the soundtrack gently leading you toward hope.
I’m not even sure how to begin this, but I can relate to this post. I am an adult with ADD who often fights distraction in order to focus and I am in a place right now where focus is most difficult to find. The music is at an all-time high and sorting out the dissonance in search of peace that is grounded in God’s love is my heart’s desire.
I am reminded of the words of the hymn, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” The hymn begins with the request to “tune my heart to sing Thy grace.” My prayer is to remove the dissonance so that grace is clear and that I may sing it in the forefront, not the background of my life. The last verse says it all:
“O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.”
Not only does my heart need to be tuned to God’s grace, but it needs to be bound to Him, so that my wandering stops, my heart is sealed, and I am able to do what it is He would have me do. Make it so, Lord, even now.
Judy, thank you for sharing and grateful this post was meaningful to you. Grace and Peace, Stanton