This is day three of twenty-one days of posts between January 10th and January 30th of 2021. Hello again to those who read previous days, and hello to those of you who may have stumbled across this post “out of order”. You should go back and read from Day 1, for a few reasons. It explains why I am doing this. It is the first one, and I may make reference to something in it in this post or a later one. It also has a list with each day’s post (once they are available) and you can jump to whatever topic you are interested in. Thanks for reading!
I love music. Anyone who has read any of my posts relating to music knows that. I love all kinds of music. I like music to be playing pretty much any time except when I am asleep. Then it tends to bother me…
One place I like to have what I call “my own music” is in the car. I hate being dependent on the radio to provide me with music during my short commute back and forth to work. There is no skip or back button anywhere for the radio. Needless to say, I vastly prefer to have my own music in the form of an iPod in one of our cars, and a USB thumb drive in the other.
Why so particular?
I’m particular about music in general. I listen to a wide variety of genres, but bad music is bad music. The wrong music for my mood is temporarily bad music, even if it is perfectly fine at another time. I want control. I want to know that somewhere on that iPod or that USB drive is something I want to hear at that particular moment.
I have a playlist on the iPod and a directory on the USB drive that are labeled “driving music”. These are the songs that I most likely want to hear as I motor down the road. What artists are included in this list? An incomplete list would include Marshmello, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Avril Lavigne, Garbage, Foo Fighters, Fall Out Boy, Billie Eilish, Florence + the Machine, Morphine, Owl City, Flyleaf, The Cure, The Sundays, R.E.M., U2, Coldplay, shipwrek, Floods*, and a smattering of contemporary Christian artists – Hillsong, Bethel Music, Phil Wickham, Passion, Kings Kaleidoscope, Lauren Daigle and Elevation Worship.
About the only music I won’t listen to while driving is “classical music”. The very dynamic nature of what is considered “classical” music makes listening in the car difficult. That doesn’t mean I don’t like my music loud, in fact, I prefer it that way and the car is about the only place I can play my music at the volume I prefer. Not just because it is loud, but because no one else in my family likes the music I do. Sad, but true.
Now, dear reader, you’re asking yourself, if you read Day 1 of this series, how am I going to relate this to faith? It’s so easy, and a little bit self incriminating.
I said I didn’t want to live at the mercy of the radio. I wanted a skip and a back button. I wanted to know that what I wanted to hear was available, accessible, and only required me doing the right thing (pressing skip or back) enough times to get to it. Except, that’s not how life works, is it? We don’t have any guarantees that what we want is available or accessible, regardless of what we do. We have to put our trust in God that He knows what is best for us, that he knows what we need, and that he will provide it to us at the right time.
Did I just equate a car radio with God? Kind of…but an omniscient, all powerful, omnipresent radio that is with us all the time, no matter where we go. It’s not a very apt comparison, but for this particular example, and since I’m the one writing this, I’ll go with it.
This analogy prompts me to pray the following:
God, help me to relinquish control to You in everything. Help me to realize that You know what I need, what I desire, and know what I can handle. You will bless me as you deem fit. In this life, there is nothing certain except for You and what you promise us.
Thanks for reading to the end!
*I can, as of this writing, only find this band on Soundcloud, under the name East Coast Floods. Once you land on their page, their name is simply “floods”. They have an eponymous album and three other tracks posted there.
Featured Image: Photo by Jonathan Gallegos on Unsplash