Oh, how happy I should be if my hearing were completely restored…
~ Ludwig van Beethoven

I pulled up to the park today in need of fresh air. A place to stretch my bones. A quiet place to read, to ask, to search, to walk. I imagine it’s the unpredictable flood of hormones as I near the end of my pregnancy, but something has just been unsettled in me, brimming beneath the surface. Then, suddenly, it will settle and all will be well with the world again only to be disheveled and muddled by some unknown source or by unruly circumstances.

And that’s where I was: trying to center my chi again, so to speak. I figured the way to achieve my goal was by reading an obligatory passage of Scripture, knocking on Heaven’s door, and even shedding some tears so God would know how sincere I was.

But all I could do was sit in cold silence. Unable to speak, unable to hear. But then I did hear something. Just underneath the layer of Springtime city park noises – a gurgling creek, singing blue jays, rustling honeysuckle in bloom, and mating carpenter bees – I heard him.

Beethoven.

The radio was set to NPR and my ears quickly tuned to the soft violins that mark the beginning of Beethoven’s piece, Piano Concerto #5 In E Flat, Opus 73. But you see, this isn’t just any Beethoven piece. This isn’t even just any classical music piece. This is my favorite classical music piece. A piece I have listened to no less than 500 times over the course of 12 years. Like no other song, the strains of this concerto reach into a place in my soul even I don’t fully know.

That’s when I sensed it: a call to simply listen. To set the Holy Scriptures aside. To stop trying so hard to conjure up what to say to God. To stop trying to win gold stars or warm fuzzies from Him. And instead to just receive this gift. His gift. An exquisite song and a holy moment I couldn’t have possibly created or earned.

So I listened. I took deep breaths. I felt baby Jude adjusting his ever-strengthening limbs in my womb. I smiled. But before the concerto could reach the third movement, something broke in my heart. It broke as I remembered that Beethoven was deaf. As the intoxicating melody played on, I couldn’t help wondering how a deaf man could compose music so full of passion and life, beauty and grace.

As the lavish tune came near its end, I realized that Beethoven, deaf as he was, couldn’t have made such passionate and grace-filled music had he not been deaf. It was his brokenness, his weakness, his handicap that made his works exceptional.

So I thought about my state of being, how I had been so deaf this morning. Mute, too. And blind. But then I thought about grace and mercy. The grace and mercy that had met me in a very messy, frigid and restless moment. Met me in a song. Grace and mercy that I may have missed if not for my own weakness. Because if I’m not weak, if I’m not broken, then why would I need grace? Why need mercy?

I sat in a different kind of silence after the song ended, aware that God had met me in all my deafness, in all my limits and inadequacies, in all my ungrace and unmercy. He has come to all of us, and He keeps coming to us, in ways that we couldn’t anticipate or look for. Like in a 200-year-old concerto on the radio when we’re expecting a passage from Leviticus. And if we – you and I – are willing to be willing to set aside our preconceived notions of how He speaks (or sings or dances or breathes), we’ll hear it pulsing underneath all the other sounds of our lives. Grace. Mercy. Love.

And in some language meant for each one of us, He will say into our impaired ears, “Hey, listen to this, Beloved. You won’t believe how beautiful the song of a deaf man can be.”

Tags: Beethoven, Emperor's Concerto, Piano Concerto #5 In E Flat  |  Posted under life stuff  |    1 Comment