Tuning My Soul

We have a wonderful piano at our church. It sounds beautiful and really fills the room. However, typically when the seasons change, it can tend to go out of tune. Today I had to give it some loving attention before I was driven crazy during our worship service.

As I set to work this afternoon I realized that tuning a piano is a lot like tuning my soul. You see, a piano has 88 keys, but for most of those keys there are two or three individual strings that make up any one note. Middle C has three strings that are all tuned together to produce a full sounding tone. If any one of those three strings is even slightly out of tune with the others the entire note will sound bad. If you add notes to the out of tune note in a chord, they'll sound bad as well. Pretty soon you have a whole piano sounding like it should be in a saloon in the old west.

The first thing you need is an infallible standard to compare the notes to. For me that's my digital tuner. In my spiritual life, it's the Bible. Just as I need to line up each and every string to the one standard of my tuner, so I need to line up every behavior and thought in my life to the standard of God's Word.

Pianos also go out of tune a lot. However, one of the amazing things about a good piano is that it likes to stay in tune. If you keep it in shape and regularly tune it, pretty soon it stays in tune more easily. My soul is the same way. The more consistent I am in going back to God's Word, the easier it will be for me to continue aligning with the Word, even when I'm away from it.

Another similarity is that if you neglect a piano for long enough, soon every string will be out of tune. All it has to do is sit there. It is naturally bent on going out of tune (total depravity?). Humidity in the air, or dryness, or moving around can all have an effect. It doesn't even have to be played to go out of tune. If I neglect my soul in the same way, my relationship with God is affected. I don't have to go out and willfully sin all the time. Sometimes it is just neglecting time in God's Word and prayer that cause distance between me and Him.

I'm sure there are many more analogies, but that'll do for now. As a musician nothing frustrates me more than instruments or voices that are out of tune. As a Christian, I should be just as frustrated when I'm not in harmony with God's Word and not regularly spending time with Him.

"Come Thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace.
Steams of mercy never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet sung by flaming tongues above;
Praise the mount, I'm fixed upon it, mount of Thy redeeming love."