The Gift of Music

I love music.  I grew up in a home with a band director for a father.  We were surrounded by music all the time.  As I've grown older, I've discovered that my mind focuses so much on the lyrics of songs, due in large part to my mom's influence.  She is always talking about the message behind the music she listens to. I guess that over the years, I've adopted the same habit in listening to music.

Every now and then, I listen to the words in a song and feel like I hit face-first into a brick wall.  I get so overcome with the way the Savior speaks to me through certain songs.  That happened to me a few days ago.  We just returned from a two-week trip to see family in Tennessee.  It was so much fun to watch Abby Kate interact with her new grandparents and friends.  She grew a lot over those two weeks and was a much more secure and confident little 16-month-old when we returned home.  The day before we left, we were at my parents' church in Franklin.  This little church is a wonderful modern-day picture of the early church we read about in the Scriptures.  I love it.  Anyway, after the sermon, we started some congregational singing.  One thing I love about this church is that all the children come in from their classes and from the nursery to be with their families during the singing.  It's corporate worship in its truest form.  I held Abby Kate as we started to sing "Amazing Grace."  That's when my brick-wall moment happened.  We got to a verse, and immediately it was like God was saying to me, "This is what I've done for Abby."  Tears streamed down my face as I sang, "Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come.  Twas grace that brought me safe thus far.  And grace will bring me home."  That's her story!  The life she had to lead for the first 13 months was more than we can imagine as we lay our biological children in their cribs in their perfectly decorated nurseries just a couple of days after their births.  Abby Kate, on the other hand, was malnourished, abandoned, taken to a hospital, then an orphanage, then a foster home.  It was the grace of God that saved her life and placed her in a family that will love, nurture, and care for her.  It was the grace of God that brought her home.

And isn't that what He does for us?  Without Christ, we are lost.  Completely helpless.  Spiritually orphaned without a Father.  But His grace saves us through faith!  We are adopted into His family and eternally saved to be one of His children!  Grace is what gets us through each day, and grace is what will take us to be with Him for all time.

What a glorious thought!  All brought on through the gift of music.