Practice Transformed

Then the one seated on the throne said, “Look! I’m making all things new.” He also said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

Revelation 21:5 (CEB)

At the church I currently serve, I developed relationships with two members named Luke and Gerritt. One of the things I most enjoyed about them was that we’d play guitar and sing together. For a long spell, we got together almost weekly to jam. Sometimes, we simply played. Sometimes, we were prepping for opportunities to share our musical fun with others (i.e. a wedding; a fundraiser for Imagine No Malaria; sharing music in worship), but most of the time we were just playing music. This consistent practice of making music with others made me more consistent in playing on my own to learn parts of songs we were working on. To me, this was a real spiritual practice (even though we seldom did “Christian” music) that enlivened me, helped put me in a better place, and helped me to connect with our creative God.

First, Gerritt and and his wife, Melanie, accepted an opportunity to move to California. Then Luke and his wife, Abby, got the chance to move back to North Carolina. Then, I was at a loss. I just couldn’t find a reason to play guitar as I no longer had something to practice towards. So, I seldom picked up my guitar.

Then COVID hit. I had seen some friends and family doing virtual “concerts,” so I decided to do that. I did about three, and then Facebook declared, “Unless you have the rights to perform a song, don’t perform it on Facebook,” thus ending that. But something had changed. Suddenly just the music itself was reason enough to play. Don’t get me wrong, I still miss playing music with others; there is real creative joy in being able to feed off of other musicians’ licks and phrasings. But suddenly, I just wanted to play.

For years, I had wanted to try to play jazzy fills like Oscar Moore did in the Nat King Cole Trio, so I worked on that. I’m a big T-Bone Walker fan (many of Chuck Berry’s iconic licks find their genesis in Walker’s licks), so I started trying my hand at some of his takes on the Blues. I’ve long been enamored with the way session guitarist Reggie Young played (he played guitar on Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away” and Billy Swan’s “I Can Help” to name a few of the 150+ cross-genre hits he played on), which led to trying to learn some of his phrasings. I’m a long way from mastering their styles, but it has added to my repertoire and reinvigorated an important spiritual practice for me.

One of my seminary professors, M. Eugene Boring, brought home an important distinction about the above verse. It says, “Look! I’m making all things new.” It does not say, “I’m making all new things.” That’s the thing about resurrection. God doesn’t simply make new things. God transforms what is existing. And resurrection is more than something that happened to Jesus in the past or something we hope for in the future; it is a daily occurrence with God.

I do believe that there are times that spiritual practices have run their course, and it is perfectly fine to find something new. But on this day of celebrating resurrection, could it be that a spiritual practice that you’ve found meaningful in the past simply needs to be transformed or re-envisioned, not replaced? My hope is that you will take on or transform meaningful spiritual practices – or maybe realize you already have one.

Keep on practicing, because practice makes possible. Happy Easter!