Orchestra Pit

Twice, I've had the opportunity to see my favorite Broadway musical, Phantom of the Opera, in New York City's beautiful Majestic Theatre. The story in itself is haunting, and I cry every single time Christine walks toward the Phantom in the final scene and sings: 

Pitiful creature of darkness, what kind of life have you known?
God give me courage to show you, you are not alone.

The grace and forgiveness in that scene astounds me, resonating through my heart every single time.

But the thing that rivets my attention throughout the musical as the actors and singers dance on the stage is the conductor standing in the pit with his circle of musicians and instruments surrounding him. He enters before the stage light are up. He holds his baton at the ready, and the orchestra hardly blinks as they watch for his signal, the beginning of the masterpiece.

Not only are the musicians in their seats, prepared, ready to perform, they have arrived before the show began. They have removed their instruments from their cases, and they've tuned them before the house doors opened. Though they are individuals, now - when the conductor stands before them - they are no longer single units. They are one cohesive orchestra, with instruments in tune with each other and in exact, unified readiness with the conductor.

The conductor's baton comes down, and the music crashes outward. The conductor motions to the parts of the orchestra that he wants to join in at the exact heartbeat called for in the score, and the musicians respond. On tempo, beat by beat, every note of that music pours forth with every motion of the conductor's baton.

The music swells, every note in tune, every last hour of practice evident as each musician plays expertly and attentively and in unity, not a single note jarring or out of place. 

Why? Because all eyes are on the conductor. In the orchestration, the single tilt of a finger brings forth the part the musician is meant to play.

I love this metaphor, not only because music speaks to the innermost parts of my soul, but because God is the ultimate Conductor, the one who orchestrates every last detail, minutia, note according to His great plan, so that the masterpiece of the ages can swell through history. 

The masterpiece began in Genesis 3:15, surrounded by the beauty of the original creation when God faced down His enemy Satan and said: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel."

Who was the woman's offspring? Jesus, the Son of God, the One who would die (heel-stricken), the One who would be raised back to life, the One who broke death, and in so doing, crushed the head of the enemy. In that single act, Satan lost. He was defeated. Genesis 3:15 was the beginning of the masterpiece.

In 1 Kings 1, drama unfolds. David - the original shepherd boy, called from the fields, anointed as king, a man of war who brought Israel into a place of power - is preparing to die. One of his sons, Adonijah, decides in verse 3: "I will be king." So he gets everything together, recruits a bunch of people in places of influence (but who also have a history of treachery), and proclaims himself king. 

Nathan the prophet sets resistance into motion when he applies to Solomon's mother to appeal to David. And thus begins the stomping out of the palace coup. David commands that Solomon ride on his own mule, he places trustworthy servants around Solomon at Gihon, and Solomon rides into Jerusalem with trumpet blasts and people shouting, "Long live King Solomon!" 

There's a lot of political intrigue present in these first chapters of 1 Kings, but God's hand is present. Why? Because through David, through Solomon (not Adonijah), through that line, Jesus appears many years later, born in a stable rather than a palace, born to a carpenter rather than a king. God orchestrated events to happen exactly as they happened so that Jesus would be the end game, so that His kingdom would be the end story.

God tilted His finger, and history responded. God is the beginning of history and He is the end of history. Those who know me in the writing world know that I love bookends; that is, I love how a story begins and ends with a theme or a metaphor or a phrase or a statement that brings the theme all the way back to the starting point and makes it a complete circle. There's a sense of completeness, of "I'm finished" when this happens. 

Revelation 1:8 says: "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "Who is, and Who was, and Who is to come, the Almighty." The Alpha, the Beginning, the Omega, the End. The Full Circle. The Complete Story. The orchestra's Conductor who weaves together the music according to the slightest movement of His baton, the One who pays the closest attention to all the scores.

We, the musicians, can only play our piece, keeping in tempo with the heartbeat of the masterpiece. Let's leave the orchestration of the whole score up to Him, shall we?