CROSSPURPOSES 147 - THE FARMER AND HIS (OUT OF TUNE) VIOLIN.
THE FARMER AND HIS (OUT OF TUNE) VIOLIN.
I’ve grabbed this title from something Selwyn Hughes once wrote. It was about having a daily quiet time in the Lord’s company, a matter which we all know is essential to the nourishment and growth in soul and spirit.
His text was from the Psalms.
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. (Psalm 143:8)
When he was asked how and why he maintained his daily quiet time, Selwyn Hughes talked about an Australian grazier, living on an isolated property, whose violin was out of tune. To tune it he needed “a standard note” which he didn’t have at home. What to do? He had an idea – a brainwave. He wrote to the nearest radio station asking if they would give him the standard note by radio!
He asked. It did. Stopped its program at an agreed time and struck his note. He tuned his violin and was able to get on with his music.
Selwyn Hughes’ point? It’s in that quiet time, best in the morning before we hear the world’s ever present, demanding, discordant, clamouring voices – its noise – that we can tune in to the voice of our Lord. It’s the best time to hear and tune into the standard note.
“That is what a quiet time in the early part of the day does for you. Before the mists of worldly happenings blot out your view of God, you take a time exposure of Him which is indelibly imprinted on your mind. Then, after the mists close in, the vision is there – within. You live in two worlds at once – drawing physical strength from the world around you, and spiritual sustenance from the world above you. Pascal, the great French philosopher and Christian, once said: “Nearly all the ills of life spring from this simple source: that we are not able to sit still in a room.” But what if, in the stillness, we meet with God – how healing that would be? We would arise with what Stevenson calls “happy morning faces”. We become children of the dawn.”
Selwyn Hughes
One Year Devotional
Water for the Soul 2002.
So there! Tune in to the one radio station which can give you the ‘one note needful’.
O, and by the way, a little ‘violin’ insight, courtesy of the The Lutheran, which arrived on February 9. A W Tozer is right on the money – or should that be ‘note’:
“Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become ‘unity conscious’ and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.”
Bless and be blessed.
Fred
I’ve grabbed this title from something Selwyn Hughes once wrote. It was about having a daily quiet time in the Lord’s company, a matter which we all know is essential to the nourishment and growth in soul and spirit.
His text was from the Psalms.
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. (Psalm 143:8)
When he was asked how and why he maintained his daily quiet time, Selwyn Hughes talked about an Australian grazier, living on an isolated property, whose violin was out of tune. To tune it he needed “a standard note” which he didn’t have at home. What to do? He had an idea – a brainwave. He wrote to the nearest radio station asking if they would give him the standard note by radio!
He asked. It did. Stopped its program at an agreed time and struck his note. He tuned his violin and was able to get on with his music.
Selwyn Hughes’ point? It’s in that quiet time, best in the morning before we hear the world’s ever present, demanding, discordant, clamouring voices – its noise – that we can tune in to the voice of our Lord. It’s the best time to hear and tune into the standard note.
“That is what a quiet time in the early part of the day does for you. Before the mists of worldly happenings blot out your view of God, you take a time exposure of Him which is indelibly imprinted on your mind. Then, after the mists close in, the vision is there – within. You live in two worlds at once – drawing physical strength from the world around you, and spiritual sustenance from the world above you. Pascal, the great French philosopher and Christian, once said: “Nearly all the ills of life spring from this simple source: that we are not able to sit still in a room.” But what if, in the stillness, we meet with God – how healing that would be? We would arise with what Stevenson calls “happy morning faces”. We become children of the dawn.”
Selwyn Hughes
One Year Devotional
Water for the Soul 2002.
So there! Tune in to the one radio station which can give you the ‘one note needful’.
O, and by the way, a little ‘violin’ insight, courtesy of the The Lutheran, which arrived on February 9. A W Tozer is right on the money – or should that be ‘note’:
“Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become ‘unity conscious’ and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.”
Bless and be blessed.
Fred
posted by PastorFredVeerhuis at 9:59 AM
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