A Beautiful Noise.

Anyone and everyone who knows me knows that I have a great love for technology. I spent my whole working career involved with engineering and technology of one sort or another. When I started my working career there was no such thing as a home computer. And calculators were only available to university lecturers and researchers. The mobile phone was non existant. We had to use real phones in phone boxes.

I have witnessed the advent and rise of home computer technology from being non existant to the point now that any working person or business cannot function properly without one. And it has been an interesting time to watch. Schools and colleges have now taken this methodology and given it a definition all of its own. It’s called S.T.E.M. – Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics. And it has been fascinating to watch.

I can go and get a little selection of electronic components and connect them all together so that they make a little buzzer. I can do the calculations so that the buzzer can vibrate at precisely 256 times per second. (Remember that number). I can do all the sums and I have the engineering skills and abilities to make that happen. 

Now. There’s a young woman in my church. She plays the concert flute with the music section. And I know that if anyone were to go to her and ask her to play Middle C that she would blew across the mouthpiece and the most beautiful note would come out of the instrument. And the air would vibrate at 256 times per second. (There’s that number again). The guitarist and the pianist could also do the same thing with their instruments. And all three instrumentalists playing together would make a most beautiful noise. And all three musicians would be making their instruments vibrate at 256 times per second.

You see, science and technology have taken the beauty of art and reduced it to a sequence of numbers and ratios. Artists can take a sequence of colours and paint the sky but none have ever been able to capture the beauty of a real sunrise or sunset. Some have come close but none have done it.

We have invented the aeroplane. And there are some very skilled pilots who can fly at aerobatic shows and perform some fantastic feats to mesmerise the crowds. But no pilot has ever come close to creating the beauty of watching a flock of starlings in the evening sunset before they roost. They are called "murmurations" and I used to witness them regularly as I drove home from work.

We have come close to creating such a thing now with drone technology. And the drone shows in the night sky are fascinating. But it still takes a group of people sitting behind computers to plot the drones through their orbits and paths. But no one can recreate the beauty of the starling murmurations or the V formations of geese migrating south for the winter.

And studying the bible can be very much like that. We can start to learn all the statistics. We can memorise a lot of facts….

    66 Books in the Bible – 39 in the Old Testament. 27 in the New Testament.
    4 Gospels – Two of which were written by people who weren’t actually disciples. Mark and Luke.
    Twelve tribes of Israel – Twelve Disciples – Twelve foundations in the Eternal Kingdom.

We can get our dictionaries and our commentaries and we can study them to see all the parallels and cross references. We can get into our various belief systems and we could even have a “homoletic exegesis on the hermeneutics of eschatology”. (It’s a real thing. I learned it at one of the Bible seminars).

But all this knowledge will mean nothing if we don’t read and learn the scriptures with the view of worshipping and thanking God for being our creator. They will just become a string of meaningless words and pointless fables.

As Paul says in his first letter to the church at Corinth…

        1st Corinthians ch13 (1)Even if I speak with all the languages of men and of angels, but do not             show you or tell you about the love of Christ, I am become as clanging bell, or a tinkling cymbal. 

You see, without Jesus entered into the mix the Bible means nothing. The whole of the Old Testament tells of the history of Israel and of the family lineage right up to Jesus. It tells of man’s estrangement from God who created him and of man’s restoration to God who came to the Cross and died for him.

And without all those little electronic components coming together then I could never make a device that would play the note of Middle C. Without the musician playing their instruments in the way that they do then those instruments are nothing more than lumps of metal and wood sitting in the corner.

We have been given “purpose of life” in God. To quote the very first question in the Presbyterian Chatecism – Q. What is the chief end of man? A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Genesis ch2 (7)And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his  nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Listen to the words of a man called Elihu when he tried to reason with Job in the O.T.

Job ch33 (4)The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

Listen to the words of Jesus as he initiated the New Testament Church as written in the Gospel of John…

John 20 (19)Then, the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, "Peace be with you." (20)When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. (21)So Jesus said to them again, "Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you." (22)And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.

Without living in thankfulness to God we have no real meaningfulness in Life. Oh, we can have our ambitions and achievements. And for a lot of people they have the purpose of family or career. We can have our dreams and desires. But these things change and take new directions over our lifetimes. Families and careers are not something that we have total control over for they take on journeys of their own.

We start out our lives with thoughts, dreams and desires. But when we reach later years and look back, the journeys we have lived are not the journeys that we thought we had planned out at the start. And for the Christian the common factor is God’s guiding love. Even when we did not think about God He still loved us. But for the non-christain the only thing left is bewilderment.

Consider the words of Israel's King David from the well known Shepherd's Psalm...

Psalm ch23 (3)He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake.

So, why don’t you just sit in your quiet time and say Thank you to God. Thank Him for being in your life, even when you couldn’t see Him. Because for Him, your thoughts and praises will be a most beautiful noise.

Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew.
That I may love the way you love, and do what you would do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God, until my heart is pure.
Until my will is one with yours, to do and to endure.

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