pure : free from harshness or roughness; being in tune

It takes a long time to learn how to play the violin in tune. I remember many frustrating violin lessons in high school where my teacher would make me slow down and play the same passage over and over for better intonation. Sometimes I could tell I wasn't playing perfectly in tune, but often my teacher heard beyond what I did. He had many more years of training and knew what to listen for. Not only that, but he knew what needed to be fixed.

I would argue the most common and universal human longing is for shalom: peace and flourishing; for things to be the way they should be. Intrinsic in this longing is the acknowledgement that things are not currently what they should be.

We feel it in the tension of broken relationships. In the hatred that emerges in the political scene. When we read another devastating news headline. When we are overlooked for the hundredth time and our talents seem to go wasted. It's the sinking realization: "This is not how it was supposed to be. Isn't there more to life than this?"

Yes, yes there is.

We may not have the words to verbalize all that is wrong in the world, or how to fix it, but can't we agree that something is missing? Or Someone is missing?

In Genesis, we see God speak over the chaos of creation and bring order. For a short time, everything was how it was supposed to be! Man and woman walked in perfect love and communion with their creator, and it was very good.

But following the deception of Satan, humanity chose autonomy and self-sufficiency instead of dependence on God. We ran and hid from our maker and lover. Adam and Eve disobeyed the Word of God, and humanity was exiled from the garden, destined to feel the brokenness of the world and the weight of our sin and rebellion every time we work the ground, have dominion over the earth, and multiply. The very vocational acts given in humanity's call to maleness and femaleness cause us to feel brokenness in our bodies (Genesis 3:14-19).

Don't we long for purity? To be saved from the brokenness we see and experience all around and within us? To be carefully tuned like an instrument so we can produce beauty the way we were intended to?

We have a maker who does not let our rebellion and sin go unpunished, but who takes the full weight of the punishment upon himself. The consequence of Adam and Eve's sin was exile from the garden forever... but God pursued them. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:16-17).

Despite humanity's fallen state, Jesus became one of us and lived the perfect life we can't live. When the sinless Son of God died, he bore the entire weight of our sin, that as he rose from the dead, we too rise to new life with Him. Humanity ran from God in the shame of sin, and now is invited to run back to him with the assurance of total forgiveness, as he himself runs after us.

This life is not what it should be, but this life is not all there is. We were made for communion with God not ultimately in the utopia of the garden, but in an eternal marriage with Christ. Our hearts were made to be in tune with the voice of the Father, and though we are not yet face to face with Him, we can seek to be in better alignment with Him now. To hear his still, small voice and fall in love with the God who made us for himself.

One of my favorite moments in worship is when the instruments cut out and the voices remain. When voices sing in unison, it becomes clear our eyes are hearts are locked on a common goal: glorifying the risen Lord Jesus.

Jesus is the pure standard we tune our lives to. Praise God, he is doing the slow, difficult work of tuning my heart strings to the notes that only He hears. He hears my cries about the way things should be, and is whispering to me promises of the way things will be.

And so we sing:

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above;
Praise His name--I'm fixed upon it--
Name of God's redeeming love.