I’ve got this friend named Jimmy. He lives a larger-than- life existence that could fill up the pages of a novel. Like most of us though, some of his chapters are more steps backwards than forward. But it’s these chapters that God has used to showcase His grace and create in Jimmy a special kind of wisdom.
When it comes to knowing what is going on inside Jimmy’s head, little is left to the imagination. He just says it…whatever comes to his mind. And oftentimes it is hilarious. Sometimes it’s sad. Other times it’s vulnerable and insightful. And sometimes, it’s more relevant than he realizes.
A couple weeks ago, I was running sound for the praise team where Jimmy plays guitar. During sound check, we found that his guitar was not coming through the speakers. He checked the connection, confirmed the battery wasn’t dead, and even tried a different channel and cable. Nothing. The guitar wasn’t pinging anywhere on my board.
After some troubleshooting with no result, I surmised the issue stemmed from the instrument itself, not the connection. His response was “I’m sure it is. The guitar fell apart this week, and I had to put it back together. The tuner’s not even in the right spot, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s not working.” We all kind of chuckled, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned that before we worked on the guitar for twenty minutes of our practice time.
But I was intrigued now. Guitars typically don’t just fall apart- there had to be a story there. And since when did Jimmy know how to re-assemble broken guitars? So many questions ran through my head, but we needed to move on. So I just complimented the fact that you couldn’t tell from looking at it that the guitar had been broken and repaired that week.
His response stopped us all in our tracks. “Thanks, but it doesn’t really matter if it looks good. Obviously something is still wrong on the inside.”
Everyone stopped what they were doing. The singers looked at him. The tech team paused at the profoundness of what he’d just said. But in true Jimmy fashion, he had moved on and wanted to know what key the next song was in.
A week later, though, his words were still rolling around inside my head.
I never did get to ask how Jimmy’s guitar broke. Guitars are pretty sturdy, and typically only break if mishandled. Dropped carelessly, thrown in anger, left in less-than-ideal environmental situations. Whatever it is, it’s typically our fault.
We- our mind, body, and soul- can find ourselves in broken situations because something has been mishandled. Whether it’s neglect of the things or people we know to be life-giving. Carelessness about the situations we put ourselves in. Angry responses that do more damage than healing to our own souls. Often times, we are the cause of the ‘breaking’ in our life.
And we work really hard to put it back together. Ideally before the next Sunday, so that someone else won’t actually see the brokenness.
Jimmy is a good guitar player. But he’s not a guitar maker. He knows guitar parts fairly well, but not well enough to construct one. Same with us. We are decent at managing our lives, families, jobs, budgets, emotions, etc. But we aren’t the best at putting the pieces back together when they break. We try, but it’s just not the same.
And when we try, we may look good on the outside- no indication of any brokenness on the inside. Until it’s time to play, and no sound comes out. Have you ever been in a situation like that? You thought you had it managed. Patched the cracks and used the good wood glue. Even painted over it. But then life called on you to step out and deal with a conflict, face a hard truth, be a good friend, or be the bigger person. But your tuner wasn’t fixed. No sound came out. And you were exposed as broken, despite your best efforts to appear fixed.
So what did Jimmy do? Even though he couldn’t connect to the speakers, he stayed on the stage and played anyway. He worshiped Jesus anyway, despite a broken tuner. And this week, he’ll take some more time with someone, maybe even on YouTube, who knows more about constructing guitars and give that broken tuner some attention.
When no sound comes from our efforts, when our insides are broken; we don’t have to hang our head in defeat. Worship anyway! Sing praises to the God who made us and restores our imperfections. Then go sit at His feet. The Psalms say that He ‘knit us together’. He made our mind, body, and soul and knows it better than we can even imagine we know ourselves.
Let the only One who truly knows our souls do the repair work. Let Him work from the inside out, turning us into the glorious instruments he designed us to be. Let the instrument maker fix our sound.
Excellent!