God and Jazz

This evening while exercising I was listening again to Jazz extraordinaire Pat Metheny's wonderful Offramp, which first came out in 1982 and won a grammy that year for "Best Jazz Fusion Performance." I have been enjoying this album for over 20 years. I originally purchased the album in CD format. But shortly after being given a Nano for my birthday in October of 2005, I imported the album using iTunes Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) @ 128 kps.

Recently, I upgraded my car stereo and wanted to see if I could improve my sound fidelity by using a thicker file format. And so I changed the default import format to MP3 @ 256 kps.

I haven't decided yet if I can really tell a difference, but tonight as I was exercising outside with my PortaPro's I did notice musical detail and activity on the title cut of Pat Metheny Group's third grammy-award winning album that I had never heard before. This, even though I have been listening to this album for over 20 years. (Now, I know the CD format is even thicker than the MP3, so I think it might have been due to the quality of the cans - I have been extremely happy with the Portapro's even though Koss has been selling this line since 1984!)

But irrespective of why, the better fidelity I experienced and the ability to appreciate greater musical detail reminded me of our growing knowledge of God.

Sometime recently, I realized that I was spending a lot of time focusing on concepts of God rather than on God Himself. A couple of weeks ago, I felt graced with a deeper knowledge that God Himself is my primary context rather than the one circumstance in my life about which I spend too much time obsessing.

There is a certainly a greater detail to God that I've been missing and what I need to do is to listen more carefully.

Over the last several months, I've spent a good bit of time trying to wrap my brain around Ephesians 3:14-20. Paul writes:

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord's people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,

The harder one looks at and reflects upon this passage, the more one sees. One thought thread that has jumped out at me has been that:

We are reliant on God to help us to realize how much He loves us. When we realize how much He loves us, we are full of God.

And - of course - this knowledge is not just informational; it's transpropostional.

I believe that God wants us to get lost in Him, in His wonder, in His majesty, in His greatness, in His holiness, in His love.

I am trying lose myself in Him by listening more carefully.



picture from thisfabtrek.com