What Affects You?

Is there something that affects you such that strong feelings well up inside you, perhaps feelings that threaten to bring you to tears – or even do bring you to tears?  The something could be circumstances, events or both.  There are both events and circumstances that can do that for me.  One event in particular is 9/11/01.  When movies were coming out about that horrible event, I knew I couldn’t watch those movies.  Seeing the images of the planes crashing into the buildings still affects me.  Who knows when, if ever, I might view the images, documentaries, or movies without strong feelings welling up in me.  This will probably pass, but the circumstance I describe below most likely will not.

There is also a circumstance that always greatly affects me.  I realized this when I was in graduate school.  I was watching a news show about North Korea.  During that time, they were experiencing a severe famine.  In the news show, they were talking about abandoned babies at an orphanage.  They were showing these little ones each individually in their own little “crib.”  Many of the babies were crying.  I remember imagining how alone the babies were.  I remember imagining them just wanting to be near their mothers, and to wanting to be held by their mothers — to just experience human touch.  Yet, their mothers were not there.  They were alone and crying, by themselves, in their cribs.  I couldn’t help but cry because of the situation.  It was from then on, that I have become emotional when viewing images of suffering children, especially babies.  It is worse when I am not feeling particularly “happy”.  It doesn’t take much, in seeing the circumstance, to get me emotional then.

Recently, I have been wondering if given what the circumstance of suffering children does to me, if I should be persuing some kind of ministry along those lines (helping suffering children — whatever the “suffering” is.)  More specifically and practically, I have been wondering if the next mission trip (or trips) I go on should have some aspect of that help in its (their) goals or mission focus.  I am praying…

The Power of Music

This is from Cassiodorus, a Christian from around the 5th – 6th century commenting on Psalms 81:4.  I think it is neat:

‘Blow up the trumpet at the beginning of the month, on the day of your noted solemnity.’…It should be observed that we are enjoined to hymn the Lord and celebrate the solemn day with instruments for musical performance; just as those instruments sweetly combine to produce pleasant melody and a single harmony, so all our actions can be directed to the Lord and offered to his ears with the most pleasant intonation.  The discipline of music incorporates great power and knowledge that brings delight; teachers of secular literature, through the generosity of God who grants all that is useful have made it possible through theoretical texts to ascertain what was earlier regared as hidden from view in the nature of the world.  The first division of this discipline, then, is into harmonics, rhythmics and metrics.  The second division, that of musical instruments, is between percussion, strings and wind.  The thrid division is into six harmonies, the fourth into fifteen tones.  In this way the virtue of his most beautiful discipline is unfolded by distinctions made a long time ago.  We read in secular works that many miracles were brought forth by these measures.  But we need say nothing of this fabulous material; we read that by means of David’s tuneful harp the demon was expelled from Saul.  The divine reading attests that the walls of Jericho at once collapsed at the din of trumpets.  So there is no doubt that the sounds of music, at the Lord’s command or with his permission, have unleashed great forces. [Emphasis mine]