Good Morning, Church Family and Friends,
In a church I served a number of years ago, there was a man who once set out to learn how to play the violin. He was a financial advisor by trade, but if you asked him who he really was, deep down inside, he would tell you that he’s a violinist. He fell in love with the violin years earlier. One year, he finally decided to act on his attraction, and he signed up for a course at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. He would go there straight after work. He ate, slept, and lived the violin. He would listen to recordings of famous violinists. He was finally able to play for church services, for weddings, and for funerals.
I recall that he was not a perfect violinist; he would miss a note here and there. As far as I know, he was never asked to join the symphony or play the violin professionally or full-time. But he was as much a violinist as one could ever be. His life had been transformed, changed forever, because of his art. His daily routine was shaped and trained in accordance with the demands of the violin and its music. He was a credit to the violin and what it can do for someone who dares to submit to what it requires. I don’t remember if he ever fully mastered the violin. But the violin went a long way to nearly mastering him.
He was once at a party, and someone asked him, “What do you do for a living?” He answered, “A lot of the time, I’m a financial advisor. But when I’m at my best, I’m a violinist.”
You know that can be true of anyone, young or old. I hope you will take this as a parable about following Jesus Christ, about being a Christ-follower, about being a disciple.
When I first started seminary at Duke Divinity School, Dean Robert Cushman spoke to us at orientation. He said something I still remember. He said, “To be a Christian is to be a student. Your task is to be an excellent student. Your discipleship means that you should study conscientiously and thoroughly.” He was talking to a group of first-year seminary students, but he was talking to you, too. Wherever you live, whatever you do, wherever you work, you are a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps the most important question we can be asked is not, “What do you believe in?” but “who are you following?” It’s been said that the world judges Jesus on the basis of the kind of lives Christianity produces. The only proof we have, the only real test for the validity of the Christian gospel, is whether or not the gospel produces men and women who are a credit to the master to whom we are apprenticed.
Faith in in the following,
Bruce Jones, Pastor
Imagine Church
