I’ve been given a temporary license to shed some responsibility, and time is of the essence. I’ve got to hurry up and relax. For a little while (that may feel like eternity) my amazing wife has agreed to single-handedly wrangle the kids, giving me sixty minutes to nurture my malnourished, introverted soul.
It looks like this: me sitting in a comfy leather chair. Alone. Beside me rests a pair of sunglasses, a motorcycle helmet, and a paper cup of decaf inspiration with a green mermaid logo stamped on the side. Because I want to maintain the stereotypical biker image, I may or may not confess to having said beverage topped with a healthy dollop of whipping cream instead of whisky.
There’s some funky, earthy jazz playing in the background – none of that smooth stuff. It’s an unresolved medley that poetically mimics the disjointed cycle of the average human’s daily existence.
I’m no connoisseur of the genre, but I believe jazz musicians must be closest to the imaginative heart of the Creator. While most of us will pop a blood vessel trying to find a pattern in the seemingly dissonant details and offbeat timbres of life, the Eternal Mind is able to take in the whole and see – as in the Genesis account – that it is good.
Our perspective, on the other hand, could often use a little tweaking. We read in the good book that God makes all things beautiful in it’s time, but raise a skeptical eyebrow at our unbalanced cheque books, board meeting minutes, to-do lists and piles of dirty dishes. These are the notes in the melody of life that throw us off key.
What do we do with the angst? Do we medicate the shame of our inharmonious way of life with nicotine, caffeine, or a shot of the hard stuff?
Sure, that’s an option.
Or we could offer up this offbeat, atonal, improvised existence to heaven, confess that sometimes this is all we have to give, and hope that God likes jazz.
“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” Romans 11:33 (ESV)
William R. Scarrott 