Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Beautiful Music

Last night, we attended my middle school son's Jazz band concert. He has only been playing the saxophone since September, but already he has made great strides in catching up with the other band students. He began in Band as an elective, and quickly was invited to join the Jazz band, which is a more 'elite' group of kids, both middle school and high schoolers who get up really early in the morning four days a week and practice with the wonderful band teacher who, I am sure, does not get paid nearly what she is worth.

She has done marvelous things with this group of kids. I hope she reveled in the appreciative applause last night. Those kids sounded just amazing.

I was so proud of my son, watching him play-- knowing how far he has come in such a short while.

Then, I thought of something else. I thought about how for months I have been hearing only his portion of the music, all by itself. We love hearing him practice (except not when I'm on the phone!) every day and many of the songs he has practiced get stuck in our head and we find ourselves humming them out of the blue.

But somehow it was by listening to the entire ensemble play these same pieces altogether and hearing them for the first time in that context that it seemed to me that is how the Body of Christ is also. We each have our own unique talent, given to us for a higher purpose. When we combine our gifts we can make such beautiful music.

1 comment:

Lesley said...

Oh I loved when my son was in band! I loved every concert! He was in jazz band in middle school too and kept it up all through high school. He played trumpet and on his last performance in HS he played the "Trumpet's Lullaby". It was so incredibly beautiful and so touching because I knew that I wouldn't be going to concerts and hearing his talent anymore...wah! He has played a couple times since then, but is now more into drums and grunge music, which just isn't the same. Treasure these times. There's just something about music!