Friday of the Second Week of Advent
Music has such a powerful way of setting the mood: even without words, it can evoke joy and sadness, calm and frenzy, grandeur and smallness. I think of this power of music when I see people walking around with headphones all the time—are they trying to set the soundtrack to their lives, to use the music to change and transform their mood?
Today’s Gospel reading reminds us that when it comes to God’s involvement in our lives, however, we cannot set the tune. This is Jesus’s critique of the crowds: they want to choose the music and so determine the ways that God acts in their lives. Unsurprisingly, then, the crowds are dissatisfied when God does not follow the musical score they have chosen.
The invitation to us, then, is to do the opposite. Rather than choosing the music for God, we can listen to the hidden music that God, the most brilliant composer of all, offers us in each moment. And the more we listen, through our practices of prayer and discernment, the more we will discover that the melodies and harmonies that God sets down are actually far more interesting than the ones we have in mind.