Heaven Here Now
When Music Becomes a Window to Eternity
I want to write about a song that echoes the cry of my heart.
Before I ever knew what music was, it was woven into the fabric of my existence. Resting in my mother’s arms, even in her womb, I was comforted by her voice. There was something nourishing in her melodic reverence: a fresh joy drawn from a deep well of gratitude flowing from a heart continually filled in God’s presence. I was bathed in the sounds of Heaven. These conditions shaped my earliest memories, and I’ve always felt an irresistible pull in my soul whenever I hear a passage of music that seems to come straight from Heaven.
Not all music I enjoy evokes such significant depth, but I am involuntarily drawn to a certain order in music that seems to express this Heavenly quality — even if, due to unrepeatable conditions, the moment of that awareness is barely a crack in the cloudy sky I get to peer through only once. It is difficult to describe that order, but for me, it seems to be an intentionally curated blend of mounting harmonic layers and deliberately iterative rhythmic structures that draws me both higher and deeper, provokes my imagination and refreshes my connection to God. Put another way, it is often the output of a classically trained musician who has devoted time to studying the mathematical and logical order of frequencies and rhythms; and who disciplines that knowledge through the lens of an intimate relationship with the Creator of our capacity to discover that very order. It is something like the audible results of an endlessly diverse and disciplined pursuit and reflection of God’s own glory. As God spoke the universe into existence, literally imparting unique frequencies and vibrations to all forms of created matter, I can hardly imagine anything more Heavenly and creative than to align with Him in this creative capacity. It is no wonder the angels in Heaven are described in the book of Revelation as endlessly singing in worship, “Holy Holy Holy!”
Anyone who enjoys music, when questioned on the point, will likely admit there is no adequate explanation (logical or otherwise) that can be offered to defend one’s taste in music. Nevertheless, our tastes are not arbitrary. In one way or another, we all have the ineffable capacity to yearn for Heaven. Since each one of us bears the unique fingerprints of God, we all yearn for Heaven in different ways. We can hardly offer a better reason for the things that move us, except that since God made each one of in His infinite image, His threads of delight woven in and through us are also innumerable. And the yearning itself is one of the strongest, most enduring proofs of the realness of His own longing felt in us: the capacity to hunger for something no earthly pleasure can satisfy.
But for all the unique gifts God bestows to meet an equally unique need, He gave us one thing of Himself which is completely unalterable: a Truth so singular and so utterly objective as to magnetize and reorient all other truth toward Himself. He is the source of a gravity so powerful that no one can escape discovering that their orientation is derived entirely from, and designed to return to, Him — even if, in the mystery of God’s sovereignty and human response, we may resist or deny His presence, or reject His existence altogether.
Jesus is precisely that Truth we may not escape; however, we can be united to Him at the cross, or refuse the surrender and be eternally divorced from His presence — left to endure an eternal and all-consuming solitude of strife and sorrow. His sacrifice, paid full in exchange for my treachery of self-validating, self-actualizing, and self-congratulating sinfulness, opens the door to Heaven. As I experience His mercy, I meet the Holy Spirit …and new life begins. How could the response to this be anything but exuberant, joyful, worshipful, glorious sound?
These are, admittedly, concepts for which we have no material evidence that can be verified by the senses He gave us for interacting with a material world. And rightly so, because there can be nothing inside the universe of knowable, measurable facts that could remotely be compared with the immeasurable Source from which all other facts proceed.
We won't find the blueprints of the universe by smashing atoms or probing for stardust any more than we would reasonably expect to find “proof” of the existence of an Architect by tearing up the floorboards of a church He designed. God is, after all, infinitely beyond and greater than anything in our most fully developed human experience. And when we feel the echoes of Heaven reverberating in our hearts, it is not because by random chance we happened to be listening the right way. He awakens our spirits by the sound of Heaven so that we can hear Him properly. The fine-tuning is His, and the heart that hears it is signaled by His grace.
Everyone innately recognizes the sound of Heaven. God designed us in such a way that we each carry a hunger for His Presence that only Jesus can satisfy, and we each have a unique keyhole that He alone unlocks at His discretion. Within us, He awakens a direct receiver, a code-breaker: The Holy Spirit develops our ability to connect deeply with the language of His Word and His family, and to recognize the sound of Heaven in an utterly indescribable way.
“Whoever has ears, let them hear.” — Matthew 13:9
By now you may be wondering what song prompted me to raise this topic. There are many I could have chosen, but it was this song that first inspired these reflections and from which I drew the title for this post. I have listened to it many times on repeat, turning and returning my heart to Him in repentance, reverence and gratitude. It was written by Garrett Tyler, Jared Runion, Justin Amundrud, Lauren Strahm, Michael Fatkin and Trea Bailey, and recorded and performed by Local Sound for their album WWJD, released in 2017.