Joseph Campbell, a professor and author, said, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
Faith is quite often the cave we “fear to enter” and yet inside, as we follow the path of faith, we’ll find the “pearl of great price.” Just this week I learned two new words: “balter” meaning “to try with grace realizing both the opportunities for success and the possibilities of failure” (not everyone will hear and believe … but some will!) and “coddiwomple” meaning “to move with purpose toward an unknown destination.”
During his visit with Gaius in Corinth near the end of his third missionary journey, Paul wrote a letter to the Romans. He’d never visited their church, but he’d met some of their members along the way. And he expressed his intention to travel to Rome, but first he had to take an offering from Macedonia and Achaia to the Christians in Jerusalem.
The theme of his letter to Rome is found in the first chapter of Romans:
“… the gospel (of Jesus Christ) is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” The gospel “reveals how God puts people right with himself.”
— Romans 1: 16-17
The path laid out in Romans 10 works together beautifully to illustrate the process of salvation. The first step on the path of faith is hearing. that’s what Paul is saying when he writes later in Romans.
“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”
— Romans 10: 17
But remember, there are two sides to this conversation. Nobody can hear unless someone is speaking… You know him even if you don’t know at this moment that you know him. His mother tried to abort him, his father and alcohol almost destroyed him and his family, and his grandfather rejected him.
He was dyslectic making it difficult to read or write … and he was ugly … melancholy … and painfully shy as you might expect. Almost all his earnings went to support a family left destitute by his drunken father.
And at age 57, he contracted an incurable disability, so he poured himself into the one bright spot in his life … music!
Ludwig van Beethoven was a musical prodigy, but in addition to all his other problems, he was deaf. He played a broken-down old harpsichord he found cheap at an auction. The finish was fading, some of the keys were missing, and it was out of tune.
So maybe it was a blessing he was deaf. His servants said he could hear a symphony from heaven even if he couldn’t hear the sour notes of his old harpsichord. Beethoven couldn’t hear, but he could speak in the heavenly language that was his music.
Maybe we — you and I — are like the old harpsichords and God is using all of us to create a symphony from heaven? Maybe all God wants me to do is honk my horn and trust him to create a symphony from heaven for others to hear.
Charles “Buddy” Whatley is a retired United Methodist pastor serving Dawson Street Methodist in Thomasville.
