Immortal Song
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| Pixaby |
The notes rose to caress the faces of leaves and petals, to brush the hummingbird’s wings and still her frantic flight. They tickled the whiskers of a tiger, tugged the tail of a monkey, and embraced the two jewels of creation as they sat engrossed in conversation with a turtle. The human pair paused, lifting innocent heads to breathe in the sweet smell of the Maker’s passage, to delight in the gentle timbre of His voice singing in the wind.
The song cavorted through hills and valleys, pitch perfect as it soared in triumphant crescendo, as though lifted on eagles’ wings.
Suddenly, the mood shifted. The music slowed, taking on a minor key, going from dance to dirge in only as much time as it takes to make a poorly considered decision. The stage seemed darker at that moment in time, the notes of the song farther away, faint; overrun by shriller, more dissonant chords. The Master Conductor’s first movement had come to an end.
Nevertheless, the haunting melody lingered in the air, waiting. At times, the Wind hummed the song in lonely solitude. Now and then, He swept down to whisper the tune in the ears of a sometimes tone-deaf creation. On one such occasion, the familiar refrain bloomed in the desert, albeit reluctantly, on the tangled tongue of a prince-turned-shepherd. He passed on the Master Conductor’s second movement to a choir of millions. Their voices blended imperfectly, vocal cords atrophied from their long neglect in practicing the song, in their failure to possess the music and to be possessed by it. With eyes on the Conductor, and ears listening for the true, pure notes of the Singer, there were moments of grandeur as the anthem of heaven poured from earth-bound hearts. The song soared again. The backdrop of history was brightened once more by the music’s presence.
The song danced, skipping through the ages. Occasionally, a beat was missed here and there, a note or two flattened or made sharper than the Composer had desired. Nevertheless, it was His song; He knew each scale perfectly, every up, and each down. The song of heaven went on whether in swelling shout or woeful whisper.
Then came a time when the song was so familiar that the audience stopped hearing, or singing, the music. Seeking to revive what their evil hearts told them was dead, they rewrote the score, changing note after note in an effort to bring the song back to life as they perceived it. The result was not even a good copy of the original. The world sang the words but the music, the harmony, was gone. The Composer, saddened, prepared to conduct the next movement of His work.
He sent the Singer of songs for a personal appearance, commissioned to bring resolution to a fractured melody. Clothed from the wardrobe of humanity, the Singer exited the stage of heaven and sat in the audience below. His song sounded strange to the ears of His listeners, as though He were the one out of tune and not them at all. The music flowed purely once more, reaching out, touching, capturing, and filling, replacing the corrupted bars with incorruptible harmony. The bridge had been secured.
Then, for a split second in time, the music stopped; the song and the Singer crushed by unworthy, incapable writers of cheap lyrics.
However, the Great Divine Composer had only allowed a single rest to be written on this bar. It was not the end of the concert. So the song began again, triumphant and even more glorious as it rose to fill the earth once more with the harmony of heaven. The music would go on, and on, and on, carried by many voices to the farthest corners of the world.
The Conductor of the heavenly orchestra smiled and bent down to complete the next, and final, movement of His opus.
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