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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems: 34. Living Musically.
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 34. Living Musically.
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Living Musically.
A second great trait of God is rhythm. Everything He does is done with the sweet beat and swing of harmony. The word we commonly use for this is method, or system. The finer word is rhythm; that brings out the ease and music of it.
Nature is rhythmical. There's a fine swing to it. Rhythm is music. Life is musical, though many fail to see the leader's stick, and don't catch the pitch nor keep time, and so flat badly and drag, and lose the uplift of it all. All growth in life is by the musical pendulum-swing back and on, with the clock hands steadily telling out the onward movement.
The waters of the sea ever flow back and on from ebb tide toward flood. The moon rises and goes down to rise a bit higher each night, in a larger circle, until the full is reached, and disappears by the same gradual rhythmic swing. So we get a measure of time, a moon-th or month. The sun rises and falls through the same sort of rhythm, with its own variations, and a larger swing, from lowest point to highest and back to lowest, making the longer measure of our time. The seasons go from the ebb of dead winter to new spring life, then full flood of summer life, then autumn's decline, and dead winter, when for a while nature is at rest gathering vitality. The day rises gradually from modest dawn to full noon, and so back to its sleep at night.
The musical rhythmic beat is in all nature and in all life. Were our ears less dulled, and less absorbed in a different sort of thing, we could ever hear the music of God in nature. Through the music of nature as well as its great beauty He speaks to us and reveals Himself. God is musical. Man's love of music, so universal, is evidence of the self-mastery to which he was born. You can't force music. It must go in its own time, or it isn't music. We work best when we work musically, with a fine beat and swing to all our movements; not only best, but do most, and do it most easily.
Soldiers on march cover a greater distance, with less tire, when the band is playing. Young people in the gymnasium get more enjoyment and more good out of the exercise when it is done to the sound of the piano. So with the little ones in the kindergarten. Tired-out men are rested by music. The world and the Church come together here; music is the common element in the theatre and the church service. Men love music. It is a bit of the original image of God in us. Men noted for great achievement are, in varying degree, always men of method, of rhythm, of swing in the thing they do best. Self-mastery means rhythm. It requires deep peace as its basis; that is, absence of discord, and of the jarring note. As one comes back into full sweet chord with God there comes the sweet peace, and then the full swing of nature's rhythm, and so the heritage of self-mastery.