Speakers, Struggles and Tuneing...Willow Creek

Yesterday was the first day of the Willow Creek Arts Conference. I love getting up here. I love the setting, I love the trip (even with the waiting!), I love the change of pace, I love the refreshment, I love the challenges, I love the encouragement, I love the time spent just reflecting...I wish there was more of this type of time. Sometimes there's some tough things brought up as part of a speaker's message and I wish we had more time in between sessions to think and talk and reflect or write about it.

Trey and I were talking about a hymn we sang called 'Come Thou Fount'. He had the 'A-Ha' moment to think about the line "Tune my heart to sing Thy grace". We began to talk about the implications of that line and the correlation to our daily walk. Our hearts have to be in tune with Jesus or it will be like a poorly tuned guitar or piano where the strings aren't in tune with each other. Furthermore, even sometimes there are instruments that are in tune with themselves, but when they join a larger group they are out of tune. Now I could write a book about which is worse, an instrument that is just a few cents flat or sharp or a whole or half step wrong. Neither is good. Neither is acceptable in a band. All must tune to a single note, in America, that note is "A 440". Now for those of you who might read this and have no idea what that means. It's basically a note that vibrates 440 times a second. In other areas of the world they tune to "A 438" or "A 442" or somewhere around there. But the point is a band will all tune to a single note. Do you see the correlation between that and our lives being in tune with Jesus Christ? Our "A 440"?
As this conversation went on, I added my two cents by observing on a string instrument there is a stretching that happens to the strings when they are placed on the instrument. This is our walk with Jesus. When we begin that journey, we are not stretched at all, but as our hearts begin to be more in tune with Jesus we stretch more and more until, at last, when we're taken home and made in perfect tune with our Father and His son Jesus Christ. I'm stretching more and more each day. Sometimes I fall out of tune, but the Master's hand gently turns the tuning peg to bring me back into pitch to His desire for my life.

Willow Creek is great for this type of reflection and spiritual challenge.