Perfect Tone & The Heart

I have traded in my usual weekend role as “Announcements Pastor” the past few weeks for “Electric Guitar Guy” in the worship band.  For me, playing lead guitar in worship settings is an interesting experience as there is always a continuous tension between the simple and the complex.  I say simple because if I know the 1, 4, 5, and 6m chords in a given key I can play virtually every worship song without too much thinking.  Complex because I have a plethora of effects at my disposal that can be used in making those four chords crazy intricate and altogether groovy.

And in pursuit of that ever-elusive “perfect tone” I am always tweaking settings and using various effects.

For example, the first song we played yesterday had everything from a rhythmic dotted eighth delay to a smooth overdrive, and an octave run with a ping pong delay followed by a good old fashioned wah pedal.  Effects can be your best friend and worst enemy.  If the tempo is not right when you click on the delay, you may as well turn the amp off because the band will sound better with you out of the picture.  Too much overdrive on the stomp box can make a chorus go from “big worship anthem” to a weird rock/metal sound.  

So, in pursuit of “that tone” I am always conscious about perfecting the applicable settings and effects.

On the Sundays that I play guitar I am constantly ruminating about what tones to put into various songs and then – after service – I am constantly evaluating whether or not those tones actually worked.  Today was one of those days that had more misses than I would like to admit and for the first time I realized how crazy it is that I care so much about perfecting simple guitar tones.  It is not unheard of for me to spend an hour creating a tone that I will use for maybe thirty seconds in a song.  And when my amateur ability makes the tone not “all it was cracked up to be” I get super frustrated.

All because I am constantly pursuing “that perfect tone.”

As I was washing dishes and thinking about my lack of guitar prowess in a somewhat self-deprecating and self-loathing manner, I was reminded of the great hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”  The phrase in verse one “tune my heart to sing your praise” stopped my scrubbed and snapped me out of my ridiculous line of thinking.  You see I will devote hours to thinking about how a guitar tone was somewhat off and how it can be fixed.  

Yet, I will not devote those same hours to thinking about just how much my wretched and sinful heart falls short of Jesus’ command in Matthew 5:48 that we “be perfect as (our) heavenly Father is perfect.”  There is indeed a perfect tone to strive for and it is not the tune of a guitar, rather it is a heart in tune with the glorious majesty of God.  By His grace and His Spirit alone, may I have the power to constantly labor in pursuing a heart that is perfectly in tune with the tone of God’s glory.

May you do the same.