Trumpet and Faith

This past Sunday I played for the Lenten Cantata at First Baptist Church in Greensboro. Honestly there was nothing to special about this for me since I have played there the fourth Sunday of every month for 20 out of the past 24 months, but I did get thinking about the relation between my music life and my faith life during one of the songs I didn't play on.

Trumpet can be a real beast 99% of the time. One day you can play something great, the next it is terrible (and most of the time it is a minute rather than a day). Well, my control freak comes out when I play even though I know that I really shouldn't. I have a bad habit of freaking out when I am not 100% consistent and I will track everything I play to make sure that it is right (yea, this just makes things worse) rather than just let go and trust that after 15 years of playing, my mind and body know what to do. Well, for the first half of the cantata on Sunday, I tracked and worried and controlled and LOST. I knew what I needed to do, but I didn't do it until I was reminded why I was there. When the preacher invited anyone wanting to become a member to come forward, a young girl in 5th grade came and professed her faith and joined the church, and I was reminded of why I was there.

We can tell ourselves how to do something all day, and we do. How good is that something though if we don't include God? I knew that I was playing for God, but I also had it in my head that I was playing for me. WRONG. My focus needed to be solely on God, the man that gave me my musical gift and who I should be giving it back to. Seeing that young girl reminded and focused me because I couldn't do it myself. That is how it is with our faith sometimes. Even if we know that what we are doing should be for God but we keep doing it for our own glory, we get no where except into a big struggle. As soon as we give everything over to God and remove all focus from ourselves, that is when we will move forward. This is hard to do, just like it is hard to stop thinking about all my technique for trumpet and just play. So how do we do it? One simple phrase I am sure we have all heard many times- LET GO AND LET GOD! As soon as you put 100% focus in God's direction, it is amazing what you can do!

The cool part of this story? As soon as we started playing after the young girl joined the church, I nailed everything and found the tone that I have always loved. I was smiling and just so thankful for that girl and the love that I felt all around and my focus was 100% on God.

Moral of this blog? LET GO AND LET GOD! (It's also a great way to negate the notorious trumpet ego!)