I spend some time every day on a keyboard and though every finger, or at least two or three on each hand, can work in perfect harmony with each other, at a speed that was hitherto impossible for me to achieve, though constant practising has solved that problem, I still can't make a single note of music. Maybe it's because the keyboard has no black notes, but come to think of it, there are no white notes either, just masses and masses of little square shaped keys each with a letter or number on them. But I do know if I had the right piece of software in the big box that sits beside the keyboard, I could actually make some musical sounds by using the correct keys and some subtle moving of the mouse. But there's another thing. That mouse is so tame, it just sits there all day and I don't even have to consider feeding it, but then again, most of the day it has a fairly sedentary lifestyle.
But aren't computers and their new language that we associate with them, so wonderful and yet so confusing. When I was at school a monitor was a senior prefect who watched you. Now I watch the monitor, while a a wireless was a hefty box that held a big battery and with some very coarse, fine tuning, could be made to emit music from Radio Caroline and Luxembourg. Of course those were the days when USB sounded more like an unidentified flying object or a rare tropical disease or even a more rare pet animal. Imagine going into a shop many years ago and asking for a USB lead and the shopkeeper asking if you wanted to take your USB for a walk! And the only icons I knew were the Queen and President Reagan or maybe Clint Eastwood and the Beatles while babies were still being baptised in a font. I guess any parent would have had a worried look if the minister had said to them, prior to the baptism, if the wanted to use a Times New Roman font or the new Helvetica font! And while my desktop is now a cluttered mess of unknown and certainly not famous icons, my school desktop is equally cluttered with pens and pencils and erasers and sharpeners and homeworks. But strangely, in both cases I know exactly where everything is.
Apart from the piano that we have at home, the first keyboard I actually owned was a Fender Stage Rhodes that played like a dream but weighed a nightmare. It produced some beautiful dulcet tones but rarely left the bedroom and eventually I took a bad price for it, though probably should have kept it for its vintage value now. Over the past number of years, other keyboards have grace the music room, all with varying abilities to imitate the sounds they are meant to portray and some doing a very realistic job indeed, especially when it comes down to such instrumental sounds as organ, piano and strings, but they are only really imitations and while they fool most people when mixed in with other instruments on a recording, the true musician will always hear the difference. I have found the main reason is because, even if the sound does appear a very close copy , it is almost impossible to reproduce the way the way some instruments are played for all are not meant to be caressed in the way one would play a keyboard. That's why bagpipes, violins, flutes, trombones and the like are never totally realistic for there are certain playing styles that you just can't really perfect on a keyboard and also there are certain things you can do with keys that you can't possibly do with the real instrument.
I guess it's much the same with being a Christian for it's easy to imitate so much of what a Christian might be meant to be and to most people the difference will not be noticeable, but the Chief Musician, the one who created all music and everything else, has powers of discernment that we never have had, so He knows if we're an imitation or the real thing. However he has also given us as believers the ability to discern when something is not what it seems. That's why the writer of Proverbs records, ' Wisdom is found on the lips of the discerning, but a rod is for the back of him who lacks judgment ' Similarly, Paul encourages us to be always on our guard and to not be swayed by the arguments or eloquent words of other pretenders, for he writes, 'And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.'
I leave you with this thought. Not counting for pitch, there are only thirteen notes on a keyboard but the world's greatest tunes have been created from them. But it only takes one wrong note to be played to spoil the whole song. Keep in tune!
