CHORD AND DISCORD

CHORD AND DISCORD
Genesis 29:1-20
From the sermon “All’s Well at the Well”

OPENING

There are times in our lives when things fall apart. There are times when things come together. Of course, we hope that things that fall apart will eventually come back together.

The psalmist declares: “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.” Psalm 16:6 NIV Here is the language of real estate, the property is the best: the boundary lines are in the right places, the environment is excellent, the ground is good, the elevation is right, and the location is prime. All is well and perfect.

Not many of us have the privilege of such an inheritance, so let me use another example to illustrate when all is well, when things fall into their right places. I will use something which all of us can understand and appreciate: music.

What happens when notes on a piano or keyboard are played? How do we know if they have fallen in the right places? I have asked our pianist to help me. First I would like her to play the following notes: middle C, E, G and high C. Now play all the notes together. How do they sound together?

Let’s try another set of notes: G, B flat, D, high G. How does that sound? Well, musicians will recognise this as the G chord, and the earlier one as the C chord. Now let’s try one last set of note: A, B flat, C, D sharp. How do they sound together?

They don’t sound right together, do they? Instead of a chord, with a four-note harmony, we have what we may call a “discord”—the notes don’t match or harmonise.

As we study the life of Jacob, we will see that parts of his life are like the chords on the piano—where the different parts fall together into a pleasant sounding harmony. There are also times in his life when the notes don’t come together but instead fall apart into a “discord”—noise, sounding awful to the ear.

We have seen how Jacob tried to get his life together, get as much as he could from his brother and his father, by his cunning and deceit. Well, he got what he wanted. But then, life started falling apart when his brother vowed to kill him. To protect him, his mother told him to leave immediately to find refuge in the home of his uncle.

CLOSING

Let me close by going back to our little musical demonstration. When musical notes fall in the right places, we have music. When they do not fall in the right places, we have noise. The question we all need to answer today is where our lives are marked by music or by noise.

Many years ago, when I started attending church, I joined the choir. I did not grow up in a family where we learned music or play a musical instrument. I knew next to nothing about music.

When I joined the choir, I was given a brief audition and then assigned to the basses, the men with low voices. So there I was with some 6 or 7 men, learning our song. As we sang, I found it was not a song at all—there was no tune, the notes are more or less the same, and they sounded terribly monotonous.

I thought to myself: I didn’t join the choir to sing such tuneless, lifeless and boring songs. I had the impression everyone else in the choir was singing the same. But I was wrong. After some time, we went back to the sanctuary and met with the rest of the choir members. The conductor got us to sing and put our voices together.

For the first time in my life, I heard what I learned later was something called the “four-part harmony”: the sopranos, the altos, the tenors and the basses, singing together. It was magnificent! Each person sings his or her different part, and together, we produced a most beautiful harmony.

Today you may be singing alone. If you are male and have a low voice, you are a bass. If you are male with a high voice, you are a tenor. If you are female with a low voice, you are an alto. If you are female with a high voice, you sing the melody line or the soprano.

But God never intends us to be alone. As in a choir, we need the other parts to sing with us. We need one another. Jacob learned it at the well. He needed Laban. He needed Rachel. Without them, God’s purpose for him could not be achieved.

Most of all, Jacob needed God to put all the different pieces of his life together: a place to stay, work to do, a wife to marry, and a family to raise. God desires for the different aspects of our lives to fall into their rightful places.

Then only we have harmony and music. Only then can we say “All is well.” For that to happen, we need to be where God wants us to be, when he wants us to be, in the centre of his will.

We may be physically exhausted, emotionally drained, even spiritually uncertain, but God by his grace can turn our noise into music, put together things which are falling apart—so that we can say, “All is well.” Indeed, all is well, when we find ourselves in the place and timing of God’s will!

PRAYER

“O Lord, there are those of us here today whose lives are not holding together. We find things falling apart. Relationships are not what they should be. Things are not working out the way we want them. Like Jacob, we feel like a fugitive on the run, looking for something or someone to fulfil our needs, looking for a place to feel secure. Help us today to run to you, to look to you, to find in you our resting place.

“If our lives are falling apart because of our sins, help us to confess them and turn away from them. If our lives are falling apart because of the sins of those around us, and we are suffering the consequences, help us to forgive and move on.

“We pray that you do for us what you did for Jacob—bring us to your place of destiny, bring people into our lives who will fulfil your purpose, and help us to see your hand putting the lines and notes and pieces together in their right places.

“We claim your promise to be with us, to watch over us, to not leave us till you have accomplished what you have promised us. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.”