The Listening Life by Adam S. McHugh

Author:Adam S. McHugh [McHugh, Adam S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2015-10-29T04:00:00+00:00

Creation’s Song

Astronomer Janna Levin explains that black holes, if we could approach and listen to them without being instantly vaporized, make a noise. They spin and curve, stretching and squeezing the space around them, ringing out like a cosmic hand traced around a crystal flute. The dark sky we get lost in during the quiet hours of the night wobbles and beats and resonates like it’s powered by astral timpani. Levin says that there is a “sonic composition written on space.”11 The universe is scored.

This may be a new discovery to modern astronomy, but people have been dancing to creation’s tune since ancient times. The first chapter of the Bible, the beginning of the heavens and the earth, sounds best when we hear it set to music. The literary structure has rhythm and tempo, a beat that bumps through the passage. There is a cadence to the verses, held together by the refrains repeated on each day of creation: “And God said” and “There was morning and evening, the __ day.” On each day a new instrument of creation is introduced, adding a new sound, filling out what has come before, slowly building toward the climactic moment, the fortissimo of creation’s symphony: humans made in the image of God.

The lyrics of the creation song establish clear rhythms:

There are 6 days of work and then 1 day of rest. Six days and a sabbath. The weeks of the year go: 6 and 1, 6 and 1, 6 and 1. As Rob Bell puts it, “God is the God of the groove.”12

Eugene Peterson breaks down the music further, pointing out that God performs one creative action on the first, second, fourth and fifth days of creation. But on the third and sixth days, he performs two different acts. On the sixth day, for example, he creates (1) animals to roam the earth and (2) humans to fill and rule the earth. Then on the last day of creation, the sabbath, the number of the day (7) is repeated three times. On the other six days, the number of the day is only noted once. If you bring all these numbers together, you get a pattern of 1 2 3 / 3 4 5 6 / 6 and then 777. In modern music we play to rhythms of 4/4 time or 6/8 time, but perhaps in the ancient Hebrew world the people of God got down to this beat: one, two, three and three, four, five, six and six, seven, seven, SEVEN!13

I like to think of God approaching the primal watery chaos of non-creation like a world-class conductor walking into a fifth-grade band room. Chaos is the sound of all instruments blaring at once: the teeth-rattling cacophony that comes from untrained and undisciplined novices blowing on their horns and fiddling on the keys just to see what sound they can make. The capricious gods of neighboring societies thrived on this sort of discord, making the world out of their own violence and conflict.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.