God is able to orchestrate everything...

 There is a relatively new translation called The Voice. It relates Romans 8:28 this way.

We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan. Romans 8:28 The Voice

Being a musician I love those words. It makes me identify in a different way. While at the University of Kansas (Rock Chalk Jayhawk) as an undergraduate Music Theory major two of my last courses to take were Orchestration. One taught in the fall and the other in the spring. The fall semester was just trying to lean instrument ranges, styles, what sounded good and what didn’t. We would craft an exercise, but that was the extent of the class. It was small in members 8 I think. The second semester we spent on projects. A project consisted of a piano piece and then we would “orchestrate” it for a small ensemble of strings, or woodwinds or brass. The instructor was a published composer/arranger James Barnes. He would tell you if it was a clunker or not. The final project was a piano piece arranged for an entire orchestra, the conductor’s score and all of the parts by hand, computers did not do that yet. The finale for the project was the University orchestra would play it live while you sat there and listened. It was terribly cool and terribly frightening. Those folks were piers and friends and that was all your baby. I spent a lot of hours copying parts and going over them until the day. I knew what I thought it would sound like putting all of those instruments together. Each one with unique abilities, roles and capabilities not to mention the skills of the players in the room. But, as much as I thought how it would be there is nothing like actually listening to it. Sitting in the chair listening to your work come to life even if it is not original. Drum roll please, the time came and it was over before it even started or so it seemed. They started playing and then they were done and it was good. The orchestra kind of looked at each other and decided to play it again because it went so well. Man was I thrilled. There was one clunker in the trumpet part, one note not transposed right but that was it. I was relieved.

It doesn’t always go so good putting together different parts, pieces and people to make a new thing. Just try to get your family somewhere on time! It is hard to do! Most days it seems like nothing is working at all much less together. That’s why I like the above verse. God has a unique ability to orchestrate lives towards something good and beautiful. It seems not to matter whether from good or evil, rich or poor, huge, small, compatible or incompatible…God puts them together to make something good and beautiful. The prime example is the Cross of Jesus. The death of the Savior of the world would seem to be an end and yet with God it is the real beginning of the rest of the story of redemption. The beginning of real life eternal and free for ever. What if, And we know that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful, was really true in our hearts and minds. How would you look at your current situation? Differently? Confidently? With security? So why don’t you?              

In HIS Service and yours,

Bro G