Continuing The Music

 Hours after returning home for the first time since the earthquake hit, I cruise the house to take stock of what's happened: Is everything okay? What (if anything) is broken? What needs organizing or putting back? 

It's hard to come home not knowing what you'll find. Unlike previous times, you can't count on things being the way you left them. You just might have to say goodbye to some items you dearly loved. 

Fear can sometimes threaten to split you right open. The uncertainty almost enough to drive you mad. 

As I walk around the house, coat still on and not having settled at all, I walk floor by floor. Amazingly, everything primarily looks the same. A few piles of toppled papers and small items here and there, but nothing that a few minutes of work won't put back together. And not one broken thing. Not one. 

I marvel. 

Once again, grace has come through. God always does more. Always gives beyond what is deserved. Humble thanks is all that can be offered. Because He's just. that. good. 

As I wander into the attic and pick up a few loose things that fell over, I notice this little music box on the floor. That thing was old and falling apart anyway. But somehow it had an antique charm about it. And we never got rid of it. Funny how that is sometimes...

It was a gift from my late grandmother. I never have discovered the song it plays but, as a child, I was fascinated about how it would trip the switch and start to play when you pulled the barn door. The windmill would begin to go around. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. 

As I began to pick up that little wooden box of a thing, I tried to account for each of the pieces and put it back together again. Surprisingly, it wasn't much more broken then before. 

But then, as I picked it up, my motion tripped that sweet little music box and it began to play. The music was weak, but it could still be heard. 

Joy. Is. A. Choice. 

Always.

There, on the floor of a dusty attic, following the second-worst earthquake in Alaska history, a miracle moment happened, and a great truth occurred to me: 

When life has knocked you down hard...when you lie there with pieces of yourself scattered all over, wondering if there's a new start to be had... 

...do you choose to let the music play on? Do you pray to find the song again? 

The song may be weakly sung, but it's still worship. It's still praise. And somehow isn't this how we should live all our days? 

The now half a windmill slowly spun around. I smiled. 

The breezes of Heaven never fail to blow on a hurting soul. To fill it with hope when everything around it speaks of broken things. It is His breathe that makes us go 'round. That stirs our hearts to life. That gives us the song inside. 

We cannot know, we cannot choose, when or where life's tragedies will strike us. Sometimes they happen so quickly that we're down before we know it - knocked flat and feeling unable to get up. 

But just because we're sometimes surprised by fear doesn't mean that faith can't intervene. That belief cannot be chosen. That the song cannot continue. 

This holiday season, I don't know what may be stealing your courage and your hope...what trials may have sucked the faith right out of you and left you grasping for belief...

But I do know that there's a song to still be sung - and added to - in your life. Just because you're down doesn't mean you're gone for good and destined for the trash heap. God always has more ahead. 

The song may be hardly heard at all, but it's there. God will put you back together. But it's your part to find the music again. 

And to let it play on.