TUNE MY HEART!

Our family went to the Museum of Science and Industry several times while living in Chicago. It was funny, but our family of seven created a crowd at every place we stopped to try the hands-on experiments. I guess folk thought something big was happening at that exhibit, if that many people were gathered around it!

One of the exhibits that we had trouble tearing ourselves away from was one in the “communication” area, close in to where all the telephone exhibitions are. At this particular booth, the instructions were to put on the headphones, listen to the tone you heard, memorize it, and then turn a knob until you heard another tone that you believed matched the one you had heard.

We all took turns, trying and missing, and trying again, and it didn’t help any when Nate kept getting it so close to right that the difference could hardly be measured. One attempt would get us closer, but then the next try would register farther apart. There were onlookers, some enjoying just watching this crazy family so caught up with this outstanding museum feature, and some aggravated that we were taking so long. Feeling somewhat guilty, we would leave only to come back again. The competition was fierce!

This morning, at the nursing home we sang, “Come Thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy praise,” and I got to thinking about what it meant to have my heart “tuned” by the Fount of every blessing. It’s an old song, and people who wrote songs back in “those” days wrote words that we sometimes don’t get in this day and age. Was this the case?

The more I pondered the thought of having my heart tuned, the more I realized that it is a mistake to think that we can just walk through the doors of church and join in on praising the Lord when our heart is not tuned. If we have a week of ignoring God (for that is what we do when we do not spend time with Him), or seven days of anger or bitterness or laziness or going our own way or deliberately disobeying in this or that, I don’t believe that we can enter His presence with praise. We can enter His presence with confession and contrition, but not with praise.

His Word, His commandments, His voice are the first tone we must hear. Then after we get a good “listen” to it, we must “turn the knob” of our heart and life until it is in tune with His clear and unmovable and perfect tone. There is work involved. We must want to be in tune with Him as much as the Heldman family wanted to match the note we heard at that display at the museum.

“Come Thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy praise.” It’s a prayer of mine now. Worship and praise is different for me now. I can’t help but stop and think and “tune up” before I start to sing.

February 2006