Called to be in the Choir

"You're tone deaf." Those are the words I heard, just minutes into an audition for a small musical ensemble at the college I once attended.  Those words landed like a brick on my ego. The irony was that I had actually been a member of this same ensemble the previous year. However, the number of those auditioning had been smaller that year and the acceptance threshold had been set much lower.  This year, with a large new crop of talented Freshman clamoring to audition, the director could afford to be more selective.  I didn't make the cut.  As I picked my pride up off the floor to leave, he threw me a word of encouragement.  "Maybe if you join the college chorale you can improve and try again next year."

I never did join the college chorale.  I was too deflated. It was like being in the major leagues and being sent down to the minors. I didn't see the point. If I could no longer perform with the best, I didn't want to perform at all. So, I decided that my days of singing in front of people were over.

That was twenty-six years ago. I'd all but forgotten about that day until I sat in church, a couple weeks ago, watching the choir take the stage to sing. Now, I know mixed among them are surely some wonderful voices. But, though I can't speak for the members of this choir, I've stood in front of enough choir members while singing hymns over the years to suspect that not all of them are great singers. Some of their voices are probably a little flat, others possibly possess a little too much vibrato or tend to be just a tad out of key. Some of them, like me, are probably somewhat tone deaf.  But together, in large numbers, relying on other basses, tenors, sopranos and altos around them, what they lack individually is compensated for collectively. The sound they create together is beautiful.  They are in perfect harmony.

In Ephesians 2:4 - 22 we read, "But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ...Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit."

When I read this passage a few key phrases jump off the page:  "...made us together...", "...fellow citizens...", "...fitted together...", "...built together..."

In a sense, you could say that our God is the Director of the choir to which we have been called to be members.  I think it's safe to say, spiritually speaking, that none of us are rock stars. And, you know, that's okay. He hasn't called us to be rock stars. God has called the weak of the world. We all have areas of our life that are out of tune, where we fall a little flat. All of us have areas of spiritual tone deafness. At those times in our walk when we "blow the audition," when spiritually we fail to "make the cut", it's tempting to become discouraged, to walk away, to let our pride get the best of us and isolate ourselves from our brethren.  It's those times that it's important to remember the reason God has put us in His choir. He put us here, fitted together as a holy temple, to support one another, to encourage one another in our weaknesses, to lift each other up so that we, together, can grow in perfect spiritual harmony.

I wish I had swallowed my pride and taken the advice of that ensemble director to join the choir.  Maybe with the support of others I could have overcome my tone deafness and not relegated myself to just singing in the shower all these years. Alas, that train has left the station.

I am thankful, though, for my membership in this spiritual choir to which I have been called. I'm thankful for the support and encouragement of my brothers and sisters in Christ. Individually, though we struggle to stay on key, together, with the help of our Director, we make beautiful music.