There are few things in this world I appreciate more than music and words. Both are art forms of unfathomable complexity and possibility. I am continually amazed by the way an adept writer can make the pages sing and the way a practiced musician can make the notes speak. As a result of my fascination, I spend a great deal of my time (perhaps overmuch) absorbing the fruits of their labor. Having applied my less-than-talented mind to both pursuits to some degree over the years, I can well say that both require equal amounts of one thing: process.
The Process is something with which every red-blooded ‘Bama fan should be intimately familiar. Indeed, the Process is what takes in unseasoned 18-year-old recruits and spits out NFL-quality football players at a rate heretofore unheard of in the sporting world. The process is also of paramount importance to musicians and writers. Every note in a great ballad and every letter in a novel has been edited and re-edited before even leaving the proverbial drawing board. Like a sculptor sizing up a fresh block of marble, any person who sets out to do something great has a lot of unnecessary material between him and a finished product.
Process should be an intimately familiar concept to the Christian, as well. I refer you to Philippians 3:12-14 (NKJV), which says,
Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Paul here acknowledges that he is in the midst of his own process and aptly sums up the concept as it applies to the everyday Christian. Later in the New Testament, Hebrews 12 communicates a similar idea, utilizing the image of a race as a metaphor.
I cannot speak for you, but I know that there is a lot of “unnecessary material” in my life. Unfortunately, it is much more difficult to sculpt our lives than it is to correct a spliced comma; correspondingly, the consequences of our shortcomings are much greater. And so we must take it one day at a time. It can be difficult to see the David beneath a block of stone or La Campanella sprawled across the keys of a piano. Fortunately for us, we do not have to be virtuosos to visualize our finished product—we have a Guidebook, an upward calling.
The key to a successful, life-altering process is focus. Paul sums it up well when he says he is “forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.” When you are committed, you lose sight of everything else. The words flow, the notes soar, the marble keeps chipping away. I have been mostly writing in metaphors and generalities—I cannot say for certain what aspects of your Christian walk need your focus the most. But I know that when we apply genuine, concerted effort to the process of Spiritual improvement, great things can be accomplished.
Caleb Paul
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