When In Our Music God is Glorified

There is no better representation of man’s common experience than music. I learned that lesson many years ago when I was in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Soviet Union had just collapsed, and western business entities were moving in at a rapid pace. The Hotel Europa in St. Petersburg was one of the first luxury (and extremely expensive) western hotels attempting to do business there, and my business partner and I left our standard, Russian run, affordable hotel to sneak a peek at how the other half was beginning to live in this magnificent city.

It was the week before Christmas. St. Petersburg is dark 20 hours/day and very cold that time of year. In the lounge of the hotel, a Russian lounge piano dude was attempting to play Christmas music. Living in an atheistic society for all of his life, it was clear he had no knowledge of western Christmas music, and my partner and I kind of laughed as he struggled through some tunes that sounded vaguely familiar but off the mark. He looked at us and asked if we were Americans. When we answered we were, he asked if either of us could teach him some of the tunes he was struggling to play.

My partner spoke fluent Russian, and I can fake my way through playing the piano when the chips are down, so we sat down with him. I plunked out the tunes with some basic chords as my partner explained to him what the songs were. The Russian took out some blank pieces of sheet music and made some notes, expanding on what he saw me play, writing his own “fake” book. By the time we were finished, he was playing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas like the professional he obviously was. It was one of the most unforgettable experiences in my life.

This past weekend was Seraphim’s, my community chorus, second concert of the year. It was entitled “When in Our Music God is Glorified.” It consisted of “juiced up” hymns of the variety you hear on special occasion Sundays from your church choir. As we sang these magnificent war horses that we have all grown up with, with the organ playing and the brass quartet blasting and the tympani booming, my mind wondered back to that night in St. Petersburg.

God works miracles through music. How strange that a hack lawyer from Youngstown, Ohio, would be sitting in a bar ½ way around the world, at Christmas, in the dark, in a former Godless country, teaching a lounge piano player songs that honor the birth of God’s Son. Music is its own language, and transcends all cultures. Musicians can touch one another and communicate with one another in ways other people can’t. Where diplomacy fails, music succeeds. When 40 individual choral voices combine into one transcendent choral tone, we are one from many. It is man’s common experience. It is God’s gift to all of us.

When in our music, God is glorified…good things happen. If only we could make more of it, the world might be a much better place.