Making Music in the Rubble

Our story is a story of Redemption. Every single one of us. From the grace covered good girl to the mercy starved filling themselves with every empty pleasure the world affords. We live our lives from a certain place, but our story is part of a whole. It is one that is moving forward through a fallen world.

I don’t know about you but the last few months I’ve shielded my eyes from the news. It seems like the darkness is closing in. We’re inundated with report after report of heinous crimes against the image of God and a world gone mad obsessed with only what’s in it for me. I need a dose of hope. I think we all do.

I need more than just a sweet facebook post or a viral side-splitting videos of cute cats and song parodies. I need real hope I can hang onto in the midnight of winter.

I’ve never been big on pulling out the Christmas crazy before Thanksgiving. I love the slow pace of Thanksgiving and the pause before the go, go, go of holiday parties and pomp. I have to confess though, with each passing year, long about the beginning of November when the skies start to gray a bit more, I feel the ache for new life right in the center of my chest. I need a little Christmas.

My mind turns to Mary and the thought of twinkling lights and anticipation starts to fill my spirit with longing. My broke down soul needs to know redemption is near. My heart needs to know God came close and claimed forevermore He would be Immanuel, the very God of the universe who carved canyons and breathed breath into dry bones, come near to break the brokenness with His goodness. I need Ezekiel type hope, dry bones raising right up to life.

Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”

Ezekiel 37:11-14

A few weeks ago our pastor shared the tale of the Cellist of Sarajevo. Maybe you are familiar with the story? Following the bombing of a Bosnian bakery that killed dozens a month into the 1992 siege, Vedrin Smailovic the principle cellist of the Sarajevo Opera Company, decided to sit amidst the rubble and do what he knew best. Make beautiful music. For years following Smailovic could be found playing in cemeteries, funerals and amidst dark backdrops of human suffering.

History is filled with legends of incredible tenacity and hope in the bleakest of situations. The Advent of Jesus is not a glorious one to the world. It is a twisted account of no room at the inn and a young unmarried woman bearing down to birth a baby only to flee for their lives to a foreign land.

Maybe you are sitting in your own rubble today. Marriages bend and sometimes break under the weight of life. Children drive their mamas crazy and sometimes make wrong turns into lives far from home and Christ. Life on the foreign field can wear on the body, the soul, our very commitment to the Cross on our backs. Sometimes we come home broken by the load and uncertain of where to turn.

I’ve got my own rubble. It looks like loss and fear. But I’ve learned that the echo of emptiness is a beautiful sound. When we dare to make music in the empty space it rings from here clear on to eternity. It is a long sustained note of deepest praise.

Make music in your rubble, sister. Pull out your dusty cello, tune up the strings, and make music. We were created to walk hand in hand with God and in His hands is the hope of nations. The hope of glory. The hope that whatever rubble you are sitting in can be rebuilt, redeemed.

This is the type of behavior that can get you in trouble. It is the deviance of hope. It undermines our flesh. It mocks the world’s values. It says that there is a better way and oh sisters, Christ made a better way and in our rubble we can make music ring.

What part of redemption are you longing for this Christmas?

Photo Credit: [booo] via Compfight cc

1 Comment

  1. Malia December 10, 2014

    “Make music in your rubble, sister.” <– I love that. I appreciate that. Thank you.

    What has buoyed me up this Christmas season is the knowing that God chose to enter this life. It’s not a dynamite new truth. It’s old and weathered and can be dull with use, but I thank Him that it’s hitting me new this year. The world in which I live–and often cower from or berate with anger because of its evil and stupidity–was entered by its Creator. He stepped into the rubble Himself. He played the music of the Kingdom. Instead of coming with our deserved condemnation, He carried hope. If I am redeemed, I can carry hope instead of condemnation too.

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