Have you ever listened to the orchestra tuning up or the sound check for a band?   It may not be the most lovely sound, but tuning up is necessary for the production of great performance.  If John Cook pulls out his guitar to play for us, he must take a little time to tune it.   Before the ensemble plays they have to adjust the horns to each other and the room.    Now the funny thing is that if you tune a guitar or a French horn and then carry the perfectly in-tune instrument outside it will be out of tune.   The changes in temperature and humidity stretch or release the brass and wood on the previously well tuned instrument.  Once in a new environment the guitar needs to be tuned again.  The guitar has not changed so much but the conditions around it have affected it.  I think our souls are like that. As we move from one life setting to the next: we need to re-tune, refocus, recalculate, renew, and maybe revive our connection to God.

These days our technology allows for (burdens us with) a thousand changes to our life environs each day.  Our cell phones chirp a message bringing work to the ball field or bedroom.  An email brings family to work.   We have ex-foliated life’s transitions; we rarely cruise home with the window open, choosing instead to move on to our next electronic task with a device to our ear.  With all these unnaturally never-ending transitions we modern folk, get spiritually out of tune pretty.

Paul writes in Romans 12, “And so, dear friends, I plead with you to offer your lives to God. Think of all God has done for us.  Let your day to day living become a holy sacrifice—the kind God finds acceptable.  Such living is truly the way we worship God.  Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let Christ transform you by renewing your thinking. Then you will learn to how to know God’s will and ways for your living: which are good and pleasing and perfect.”

In this season of stewardship, let us focus our living with set times of daily prayer and a constant refocusing as we shift from task to task. May we bookend our weeks with worship and study.  May we renew our commitment to uphold Gods work with our presence, prayers, gifts, service and our witness.   Let us all work together to stay in-tune with God.  Please be in prayer as we focus our living on God’s work among us.