Resolution in the Bars

Nothing breathes here in the cold,
Nothing moves or even smiles.

I've been driving the streets all night, somehow finding comfort in the soft rain that has for the past couple days come to call our small town home. This is what I suppose Texans refer to as, ahem, winter. I like it though in some ways... staying inside, hiding under blankets, the drip drip of the coffee maker reminding me I'm not alone... Anyways, below is a blog from about five hours ago...

I never like jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.
I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.
-Blue Like Jazz

Since I became a believer, many passages have taken on new meaning. CS Lewis quotes have been beautifully transformed from clever epigrams into words that stir and awaken my heart. The above quotation by Donald Miller is what I've been thinking about since I woke up this morning (mornings have become my more concentrated time of prayer and reflection, when I'm able to listen most closely to God without the static, meaningless noise which characterizes most of my day). The morning feels clean.

Sometimes it seems God doesn't resolve, but it's important to remember that He doesn't resolve to us. In this age of Postmodernism, an age in which we've split the atom and frolicked on celestial bodies, it becomes hard to escape the notion that man has advanced. But the dubious thrills of watching a space rover awkwardly navigate Mars pales in comparison to the embrace of a loved one, the beauty of the falling sun, the faint glow of starlight. Advances in science and knowledge are only material things, and amidst our vainglorious progress, the condition of the heart remains the same.

Insert two hour phone call here...

I'm not sure where I'm going here. Heavy on the typing, light on the forethought/editing. But God shouldn't just resolve. And to be perfectly honest I imagine that anyone who has lost a child, or been diagnosed with terminal cancer, will have a rather passionate argument concerning God's apparent inability to resolve (to the human mind that is).

In classical music, from what I understand, a tonic is a note or chord that the music consistently returns to. While there are digressions and times when the music strays, the tonic is like a magnet and the movement invariably discovers it once again. And yes, the tonic gives a sense of resolution. God, to me these days, is the tonic. My thoughts consistently return to Him.

And I've always felt that return to something greater than myself. I imagine everyone feels it in one way or another, but it is only when you accept His love that it becomes articulated. It's only when you accept Christ that the tonic becomes clear. The tonic is His love, always there, always ready, always waiting to be returned to.

While the notes are often hard to make out, and at times I play a succession of wrong ones, I know He will always be there, waiting patiently, resolution in the coming bars.