Musical Diversity...

It's the spice of life!

This morning, after I tossed my junk into the car and before I headed off to church for the day, I popped a CD in the stereo for my enjoyment. The disc I chose was a recording of Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition (orchestrated by Ravel, of course). As it disappeared into the dashboard, I heard a few familiar notes from the radio. I switched back to FM to listen to the Aqua's amazing hit from '97... Barbie Girl.

That's right, folks. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Barbie Girl. I even sang a few parts myself (come on Barbie, let's go party). And I immediately followed it with Mussorgsky.

Later today, I looked up hymns for church services. I perused church choir music. I listened to the Glenn Miller orchestra's Christmas album. I also played a movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 in C# Minor, opus 27, no. 2 (aka The Moonlight Sonata).

It's a wonderful musical life I lead.

A quick thought

It's late on Saturday night, and because I'm a music minister now, I need to get up early for church. So I'll keep this one brief...

Wife is away for a week, spending time with her family. I am happy for her, but I miss her a lot. At the risk of sounding cheesy (or maybe rude), I really didn't expect to miss her this much. I expected to be able to preclude my loneliness by having some quality alone time, and while I am having some good time to myself, I am still lonely. In the last few days I've read several chapters of Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, Crazy Love by Francis Chan, and listened to a couple of podcasts. Here is something that has struck me hard today...

I think that the metaphor of the church as the bride of Christ is one of the most beautiful metaphors God has created. I believe He gave us the gift of marriage to allow us to experience His love from a couple of perspectives. Through marriage we more fully understand romance, commitment, and intimacy from the perspectives of both the Lover and the Beloved. Through marriage we have a unique opportunity to grow deeper in our relationship with God, to fall more in love with Him.

Marriage isn't perfect, though. We are a rebellious creation, prone to disobey the Creator who loves us, and so our relationships with one another are flawed. As we become more Christ-like individuals, our relationships become more pure, but we can never quite reach the relational perfection we were originally intended to experience. So I think another experience marriage gives us is that, as we learn to love our spouses as Christ loves us, we become more like Him, all the while loving Him more in contrast to our imperfect selves.