I Breathed A Song Into The Air
A couple weeks ago Laura posted the following Longfellow poem in her blog. It's a very cool poem. Then I turned around and posted it as a comment in Trent's blog, with the observation that I thought it related loosely to the subject of discipleship and making disciples. I didn't do a very good job of explaining the connection I was making in my strangely twisted inner thought processes, so I decided I should try to explain myself further. Here's the poem:I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
Why would someone breathe a song into the air? Because they love the song. Because they love the music. Because they love to sing. Because the song is in their heart. Not because (or at least not primarily because) they want to teach it to someone else. If they wanted to teach it to someone else, they wouldn't breathe it into the air, they would sing it into someone's ear.
I think the process of making disciples may be like this; it is less deliberate than we might expect...or, at least, not deliberate in the ways we expect. The best lessons are caught, not taught. They are learned because they have been breathed into the air, and not because they have been shouted into our ears.
Here is an example. From time to time I try to get a group of teens together to do some work for the elderly folks in the church. In the winter it might be shoveling snow from walks and roofs, and in the fall (as we did recently) raking leaves and helping them get ready for winter. These are important training opportunities for the teens, teaching them the importance of sharing and serving. It is also important in helping them see themselves as being part of something much bigger than just themselves.
One of the hardest parts of this is trying to organize it. To find a time when a good group of teens can get together is not always an easy task, because teens' schedules are always very busy. So week after week I ask people "what about next weekend? the weekend after?" Until we finally (hopefully) get a day that works for more than one person.
But I realized something this fall. Although it is important that the teens have opportunities to minister and serve, it's also important to me that Trudy's and Irene's yard work gets done before winter. In other words, all this time I have been treating this work as being first an opportunity to train teens, and second an opportunity to care for our elderly. And this fall I found my priorities shifting; to me the most important thing was that Trudy and Irene had their yard work done, and the second most important thing was that the teens become involved in that work.
In other words, even if no teens showed up, I was still going to go out and rake those lawns by myself because the act of service and love was even more important than the act of training.
So that Wednesday night I stopped asking, "What day will work for you?" and I announced "Saturday morning I'm going to do some yard work for Irene and Trudy. Anyone who wants to help, come to the church at 9:30."
(Notice how that is phrased...I didn't even say "we", because "we" wouldn't have been accurate...I didn't know if anyone was going to show up, and quite honestly, I was going to do this regardless of whether anyone came with me.)
I went from shouting a lesson into their ears to breathing a song into the air. Because the teaching of the song was not so important as the song itself.
Look at a Biblical example. On the night of Christ's last meeting with His disciples, before going to the cross, what did He do for them? He washed their feet.
Why?
It's tempting to say, "To give them an example. It was an object lesson." In fact, Jesus even said, "I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you." (John 13:15)
But although Jesus used the washing of the feet as an object lesson, I think it's unfair to assume that was the reason for it. The reason can be found at the beginning of the chapter: John 13:2 says "having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end." As you continue reading, you find that His decision to get up from the feast and wash feet was because of His realization that He was leaving them.
Yes, it became an object lesson, but at its heart it was an expression of the Master's love for His disciples. It was not a lesson shouted in the ear, it was a song breathed into the air. And oh, how that song has found its way into the "hearts of His friends".
Discipleship is at its best when we breathe out into the air the song which God has placed in our hearts, and it is caught by our closest friends and/or students. As such, it may not even happen "deliberately". We sing because the song is in us, and because the song is in us, others catch it.
Someone told me recently (maybe it was Trent?) that at their church the pastor never starts a new ministry. Why not? Because it must come from someone who has the burning desire for that ministry to happen. Because if it comes from anyone else, it is not a song being breathed into the air, but a lesson being shouted in the ear.
In one of his sermons from a couple years back, Jonathan talked about the sheep and the goats, and the surprise of the sheep at being congratulated for what they have done. "When did we do these things?" they asked. Their surprise may have been in part because they weren't even conscious of having done these things...because they simply came naturally to them. They were like a song breathed into the air, which the sheep never even realized they were singing, because the song had been so deeply imprinted in their hearts.
Our spiritual life, our ministry, our service, and our entire lives must flow from an inward song of the heart, and as it does, those around us will begin to pick up on the melody and the rhythm and the harmony of the song, and it will become their song as well.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
...And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
Posted On Dec 4, 2005 at 5:07 AM
On Dec 4, 2005 Laura wrote: Wow, that's a great illustration to use with that poem - I'd never thought of looking at it that way. :-)
Doug Replied: well there you go, you got me thinking, and we all know what a dangerous thing that is!
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