Freshmen Devotionals

On Mondays, I'm sharing a one-minute devotional thought with my first-year music theory class.

There are at least two themes to be developed in this context over the course of the semester:

creativity

music as a family

Our very first devotional referred to our being made in God's image. My friend Paul Scaringi pointed out to me that, at the point in Genesis at which we learn that we were made in God's image, one of the few things we know about God is that God creates. Perhaps being made in God's image means, in part, that we are creative beings, too.

Today's devotional dealt with one of the obvious things about music as a family. Families are groups of people with which we have meaningful relationships. Music provides us with similar groups of people.

It may be that music draws its practicioners closer together than some other disciplines do. Why might this be? In each piece of music we make together, we experience a life story in miniature: beginning, middle, end, with struggles and a climax, etc. Sharing these compressed and intense life experiences with other musicians can create strong emotional ties between us.

Being in music also gives us a group of people known as the audience. Even though we may not always feel like it, most audience members are on our side. They want to see us succeed and are proud when we do well. That's just the way our biological family members ought to root for us in life, even though not everybody's family always does so.