I Was Reading The Notes The Wrong Way.

I remember sitting in school many, many years ago and being totally bored out of my head with the lesson. It was a music lesson. On the blackboard there were the musical lines with the various notes placed at intervals along them. I knew what their names were. Clefs. Crotchets. Quavers. Semi-quavers. Sharps and Flats.

I could see them all making their wavy patterns along the lines. But they just looked like a row of tadpoles to me. I found it all very confusing. But I also knew that somewhere in all that row of dots, lines and squiggles there was a musical tune. But, for the life of me, I just couldn’t figure it out.

To make matters worse, between me and that blackboard there was a piano. It sat there with the lid open and all the keys displayed to full view, and on many occasions I sat and looked at them both and just couldn’t see how they all came together.

I guess the music teacher just took this as laziness or disinterest so he handed us books to read on the history of musical composers and he played classical music on a record player. Nothing of it all made any sense to me.

There must have been something about this memory that lay buried deep in my mind, for many years later I decided that I would like to take some piano lessons. I went to the music shop and bought myself a piano keyboard and booked some beginners lessons. The teacher was fantastic and had me playing a simple well known tune by the end of the first lesson.

At around the second or third lesson I suddenly realised something. I had printed off some simple musical tunes and was trying to read them when my “moment of epiphany” came. Each line and each space corresponded to a note on the piano keyboard. I turned my the sheets sideways and looked at the musical score so that the lines and spaces lined up with the notes on the keyboard. Then the music appeared to start to flow from the paper to the piano.

Every time there was a dot on a line I pressed the piano key corresponding to that line. The same with the spaces. And as I scanned along the page my fingers started to play the right notes. It took me over 45 years to figure it out but I finally got it in the end. But, why couldn’t my music teacher have told me that when I was back in school? I’ll never know.

Now. I’m still not a piano player but atleast I can look at the music notes and make some sense out of them all.

Reading the Bible is lot like that. We need to be shown the proper way to read and interpret it. For if we don’t know this then the Bible will never make any sense. The whole of the Old Testament is a record of God’s people. It records their ancient history and their laws. It records some of their songs and poetic writings. It records some of their wisdom and teachings. And it records a lot of the visions and dreams of their ancient prophets. But all these writings have one message in common. They all tell of mankind’s estrangement from God and point to the coming of a Messiah who will redeem this scenario.

If we read the Old testament without keeping this in mind then it all becomes a liturgy of meaningless words.

And likewise, in the New Testament, the writings are compiled into life accounts of Jesus from His birth to His death. An account of how The Church was formed and how the message was to be carried into the Gentile nations. The New Testament also includes some letters from The Apostles giving some lessons and instruction. And the section finishes off with another book of Revelations, visions and dreams.

But the great mystery is that the Old and New Testaments all tie in together. A lot of the visions in the book of Revelation will have their counterparts found in the Old Testament books of the prophetic accounts of Daniel and Ezekiel.

But the real key that holds the bible all together is that everything points to Jesus. God in the flesh, coming to live a life of obedience and them Him dying for us on a cross. He died an unjust death. As innocent as a lamb. But he did it in our place so that we could be redeemed and brought back to God.

This is the key to the whole Bible. And that is why we, as Christians, should study it all the more…

Joshua 1:8 Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.

John 5:39  You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.

2nd Timothy 2:15  Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (16)But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness.

I will sing of my Redeemer
And his wondrous love to me;
on the cruel cross he suffered,
From the curse to set me free.
Sing, O sing of my Redeemer!
With his blood he purchased me;
On the cross he sealed my pardon,
paid the debt, and made me free.

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