So Thankful

8 more days until I fly to Oklahoma to work at and attend Territorial Music Institute. Will be my first year at TMI... I'm pretty excited about this. I get to work with very knowledgeable people all week and learn, learn, learn! Some of you will laugh at me and tell me I'm a geek, but that's cool. CAUSE' I AM.

I made contact with the folks at Winthrop University this past week. I have a trumpet lesson with their professor next week and a meeting with the chair of the music department about resuming my studies in music education there.

You know, it absolutely amazes me the way God moves us; he moves us like little chess pieces. I was thinking the other night about how close I was to finishing my music education degree 3 years ago before I quit school. I mean, I was three semesters away I suppose and had a good transcript. I guess I would be more upset if I had failed. What was my deal?

Anyway, it was making me ill, just the thought of it. I really kick myself over this a lot. But then Christina has such positive perspective on it. She says "Daniel... think about it, though. If you had not quit, we may not have gotten married, you wouldn't have moved away from the so-called 'friends' that were negatively influencing you, and you may not have discovered The Salvation Army. Look at where you are. No- you don't have a degree yet, but because you worked your tail off, you still got the music director job at The Salvation Army, and now you have tuition reimbursement benefits that will help you go back to school for less money."

Well. I guess when you put it that way, it's not so bad, eh?

Gosh, looking back on it now, it's so easy to see how the Lord was moving me one move at the time so that I would eventually come to know him better and live a life of doing his work through music and service (I have so much to learn about that whole service thing, though). Thanks to him I am now in a musical career in The Salvation Army. Now.. it's time to finish that degree. I'm shooting to be back in by January. Wish me luck.

Dear God- I love you today and always. I thank you for your gifts and for your omnipotence. I thank you for giving me the strength to persevere when times were tough. I thank you for my wife. It's not my strength that got me to this point, it's Yours.

Lord- You are awesome.

Lord, make my music speak

The soul in the music can be really manifested in playing a simple tune as in giving the most complicated piece. I want you to give your attention not only to playing the highly developed journals, but the same care, the same nicety of touch and style bestowed upon the most simple and commonplace words that the average man such as I am can understand.Make your music speak; make it say something to the crowd; play your very hearts into the people's hearts.

-Bramwell Booth

Catherine's Conclusion

Lord, I pray that you will give me the wisdom to teach my bandsmen and songsters the true meaning of what we do as Christian musicians. For those musicians who may not yet fully understand the spiritual meaning behind the music we play or sing, Lord, give me the ability to convey this meaning to them so that they in turn can use that knowledge and their talent to give that message to those who need it. I pray that you will constantly remind me that we are not performers, we are givers of the good news. Yes, we are "minsters of note."

Catherine Booth said it best:

...I have always regarded music as all belonging to God. Perhaps some of you have heard me say in public that there will not be a note of music in hell, it will be all in heaven, and God ought to have it all there, and God ought to have it all here...The church has strangely lost sight of the value of music as a religious agency. I think God has used the Army to resuscitate and awaken [it] and while the bandsmen of the Salvation Army realize it to be as much their service to blow an instrument as it is to sing or pray...and while they do it in the same spirit, I am persuaded it will become an ever-increasing power amongst us. But the moment you, or any other bandsman, begin to glory in the excellence of the music alone, apart from the spiritual results, you will begin at that moment to lose your power...You see, when you separate the divine from the human, it ceases to have any power over souls. Don't forget that.

-Catherine Booth