Respect

Woke up to the most beautiful of mornings despite my late night yesterday and attended church in the morning. Today's sermon was different from before in a special way. It felt more intense and the focus of the message, Romans 6, was brought alive in an extraordinary way. Our pastor, too, was thrown into an agitated state much earlier into the sermon than normal. While processing the contents of the sermon in my head, these observations entered my mind, just like a second melody line in counterpoint.

Why did our pastor comment that today's sermon wasn't easily digestible and yet his descriptions were so much more vivid and spontaneous, just the opposite of what one would expect when the message is supposed to be harder to expound and require more preparations? No, it certainly wasn't the sudden surge of divine inspiration regarding the passage, for he had understood the message thoroughly long before today, nor was it because of the passage containing the most special biblical truth. Then it struck me. Our pastor had empathised with Paul's most sincere need to address that biblical issue in light of the circumstances surrounding it during his day. Out of respect of Paul's intention while penning that passage, he was infected with the similar state of being. As a pastor, he had found out the way the passage demanded to be taught, resulting in such an honest delivery of today's message.

And then the sermon was taken over by the most perfect Teacher - Jesus Christ. Don't you see a connection to your music? How often have you encountered a pathetically empty rendition of a masterpiece? What exactly are those performers lacking? Why do you play that flattened 6th chord like it's the most common chord around? Have you been desensitised by those popular songs which uses that chord until it's becomes so cliche? Where did the colours of the flattened 6th chord which the composer had intended go to?

Have you truly appreciated and respected what the composer had written and where is your sincere need to recreate the emotions which gave birth to those masterpieces?

These questions just invaded my head. Teacher Jesus seems to be assessing my absorption abilities this morning and decided to bombard my puny mind with excessive information. He sure gave my sufficient information to keep my mind working for the rest of the day, both on biblical and musical issues.

I love my contrapuntal mind, though it gets a little overwhelming at times...