When we were dating, he'd serenade me with "Maria" from "West Side Story," and that dreamy voice of his, warm as honey, helped win my heart. We have always sung together, his voice strong in melody, mine strong in harmony, together blending our unique voices as we blend our unique lives - into one.
Our sons, like their father, have rich tenor solo voices. Our daughters, like me, have alto to soprano choral voices. Each of our children, however, has a different resonance to his or her voice, a taste of sweetness or huskiness, or a spicy tang, that makes each one's song unique and identifiable. Each can sing either the melody line or the harmony. Together they make a sound that is whole. For them, as for their ancestors and for their children, and for my cousins' children, whom they sing with, continuing the family tradition - music is life.
In the past, I've talked about Life as the Great Dance, and each one of us as a dancer, dancing with God. But life is worthy of infinite imagery. So today I'll use the image that, for each of us, our life is a piece of music; each of us is a song for God.
If you like symphonies, you can think of each stage of your life as being like a new movement, light and fast and happy, or slow and sorrowful. Whatever is happening to you, joyful or tragic, is a melodic movement carrying you to a crescendo, a new phase of knowing who you are - and Who God is.
Albert Einstein felt this. He said "If I were not a physician, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music."
Amy Winehouse, that talented singer, who died tragically young, understood that everything has the inherent order and meaning of a piece of music. She said "Every bad situation is a blues song, waiting to happen."
God wants your life to be a song for Him. It doesn't matter if you sing "off-key." Your life is on key, note-perfect, as long as it's real, genuine, filled with love. Because Love makes everybody feel like singing!
You have to believe that the song of your life matters, every single movement of that continuing grand rhapsody. "I will sing to the Lord with my whole being; I will sing to my God continually." (Psalm 104:33.) "Sing to the Lord a new song." (Isaiah 42: 10.) Your soul's voice has its own identifiable, irreplaceable, sweetness, huskiness, or tang, a sound that is completely new in the universe, - producing a song that reaches God's heart.
Does it matter if you know the meaning of every note? Maya Angelou reminds us "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song." A life that is a song comes from a passion within that has to flow out of us with the irresistible force and insistence of an incandescent waterfall. It can't be contained. It flows with undiminished rhythm; it seeks to live in harmony; love makes the melody and words.
We leave the meaning of our song to the One Who is Its Hook. In a popular song, the "hook" is usually the chorus, the part that is sung after every verse, the melody and words that "get" you, "hook" you so you want to sing that song over and over. God is the One Who has "hooked" us - the One Whose Name is our Hook, the Name we repeat over and over, no matter the circumstances, throughout our lives. "I will sing to the Lord with my whole being; I will sing to my God continually."
Your unique personality determines your life song. Some people are natural born leaders. They're the soloists, leading the action. Some are the ones who are good at following and blending; they're the chorus members, part of a group effort. Yet, every person in the world, soloist or chorus member, and every part of creation, from rock to tree to star to mountain, is singing a life song.
God alone hears all of our lives' songs, blending harmoniously together. God alone knows and hears how, together, the lives of all of creation are creating a monumentally, unimaginably great and harmonious symphony of praise to the Almighty. Each life song, in the end, is a movement within One Grand Symphony that is Wholeness.
Just imagine it! All of us, all races, cultures, religions, people of different sexual orientations, people with physical and mental disabilities, together with the flora, fauna, rock formations and seas of our planet, together with the multitude of life forms of one hundred to two hundred billion galaxies, and at least one hundred million Black Holes, together with an uncounted number of angels and saints, - are creating the Ultimate Piece of Music that God hears and we will only hear and understand the day that we reach Heaven.
Undoubtedly, flooded with such unimaginably perfect sound, knowing we too are an integral part of it, we will simultaneously weep and laugh.