Feelin’ It

Can you walk about on a sunshine filled day without wearing your sunglasses? Not me. Blue eyes were what I got, and maybe they’re not actually to blame here, but I’ve got to wear shades when I’m out in the sun.

I need a filter between my baby blues and that big fireball way up in the sky. Without my sunglasses on, on a bright sunshiny day, I’m practically sunshiny blind. Too much light confronting the lens and a temporary blindness takes over. Light that is supposed to reveal something or allow me to see more clearly instead obliterates anything and everything in my view. But I slide on my shades and, ahhhhh, now I see!

Yesterday in church, at the conclusion of the opening song, a point where participants joyously clapped, came a deep and thunderous, “AMEN!” from the back of the room. What decibel level and what hertz it was could not be told and I would only be exaggerating a little to say it felt like a sonic boom throughout the assembly.

As the music continued there it was again . . . And again. The pastor discreetly walked back from whence the thunder emanated and, no doubt, said a few gentle words that had the desired effect. The service moved on and his message was oh so good. I didn’t think of the incident again until just this moment. And its about this: sometimes the most skillfully trained trumpeter will use a muting device at the appropriate moments in a musical piece. Those at a shooting range or grannies at a rock concert will wear earplugs. Blue-eyed folk will wear shades. Its about a filter and using the right one, in the right place, at the right time. Should the trumpeter blare through the entire piece of music the other notes, the melody line even, would be lost to the hearer.

Hard as it is there are times, even in a packed stadium of nearly mad screaming fans, that a judiciously applied filter, like a good sunscreen, is all that one needs. The heart is open and every bodily cell is saying “YES!” to all that is good, to this particular moment striking a chord deep within, to an overwhelming agreement of heart and soul. And so the trumpeter, the skilled one, will apply a filter and play on. God bless that unbridled soul who joined the flock yesterday. He left no doubt to anyone that he was truly “feeln’ it.”