The Senior Recital

As I sit here writing this morning, I am listening to the music from our daughter Joanna’s senior recital on her viola.  It took place last Sunday afternoon at Lafayette College, the school from which she is about to graduate.  The truth is, I had never heard Joanna play at the level at which she played during her recital. The music was as difficult as could be and the fact that she played her own concert for almost an hour was, to me at least, quite a feat.  As you can imagine, mom and dad were on the edge of their seats!  (I know there are lots of parents out there who understand the feeling!) 

As a music major (she is also a psychology major), Joanna’s recital was the culmination of her four years of music studies at the college, especially her time spent on her viola.  In some ways, however, it was also the culmination of her time spent learning, first the violin since she was five years old and then subsequently taking up the viola in 8^th grade.  Over the last few years, she has studied, practiced, taken lessons, and played with just about every group within the college—as well as taken advantage of as much play time outside the boundaries of the college as possible.  For the past couple of years, there has been great focus, discipline, and intensity to her studies and practice times which all culminated in last Sunday’s recital. 

I’m reminded that, as followers of Christ we are meant to live our lives with that same kind of focus, discipline, and intensity.  After all, one day everything we have been and done will reach their climax. The whole of our lives will reach their culmination and we will stand before the greatest and holiest audience of all, Jesus our Lord. We could say we will reach the day of our “senior recital.”

This is why the Apostle Paul wrote as he did to the church in Philippi: “But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ…Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:7, 12-14 – NIV)

Let me encourage you today to live your life in such a way that, at the culmination of it all—we might say, at your “senior recital”—you will hear from the most important audience of all those wonderful words, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”  Let’s be people of focus, discipline, and intensity as we live our lives for Christ. 

Have a great day!

Pastor Tim Harris