Music–Divine Therapy for Inner Harmony

My music calendar shows me that this is the 218th anniversary of the premier of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" in Vienna, with Mozart himself furnishing the background music from the harpsichord. After 218 years the music from this opera, however many times we've heard it, still inspires, thrills and even sometimes brings tears of laughter and sadness to our eyes. Music does this, poetry does this, a good book can do this and certainly love can do this. I like to think that music that "hath charms to soothe the savage breast" is something that comes directly from God as a part of faith's consolation and therapy. My daughter Amy and I will be speaking at a conference in Scottsdale, Arizona over the weekend and one of the things I want to say in my "brief hour on the stage" is music was created in the heavenly realm to compensate for our inability, or refusal, to hear the Divine Voice in any other way, such as through art, literature or the wisdom of children.

I think Mozart knew a thing or two about God that we, who are less than he himself or Beethoven or John Denver, have trouble hearing. A child born deaf or who loses hearing through a childhood disease may very well hear celestial things hidden from those of us who have “normal hearing." In our book Whirlwinds and Small Voices, Amy and I write of ways in which the Creator/creating God uses music to do the soothing of our distresses. As the troubled Saul looked to the singing of David for rest and peace so in like manner can we use such divine therapy for our own inner harmony. It works; try it! Sing, hum, whistle, croak it out, make a sound, the whole world will hear you and thank you. Perhaps you’ll share with us a way that music has led you to an inner harmony.