“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17

It has been my joy and privilege to play the guitar for the past fifty years. Over the course of those years I have owned and enjoyed several guitars that have enhanced my experience of playing, performing and writing music. Probably my fascination with guitars began when I was in college and a friend who lived across the hall showed me his Martin D-28 steel stringed guitar. I was at the time playing a little classical guitar given to me by my parents. It had served me well up to that point, but it was small and had a smaller sound. Having heard my friends larger steel string guitar I was amazed by it’s huge sound and the way it projected that sound through the room. I went to a local guitar shop by the beach where I was vacationing with my family for the summer and saw the same model guitar owned by my friend. Having played it I was an immediate fan and to my great joy my parents decided to give me this guitar for my eighteenth birthday. It remains a treasured old friend and still makes great music.

I have continued to collect certain guitars as part of the tools I use in writing and performing. They all have their own distinct personalities and sound that inspire and enhance the music I write and play. About twenty years ago I decided to build my own guitar and in doing so learned a great deal about guitars and how they function and produce their distinctive sound. I also learned that because they are made out of somewhat fragile kinds of wood, they at times need repairs. Recently I took one of my guitars in for repair because the bridge, which holds the strings firmly attached to the top of the guitar, was coming unglued. When the strings of a guitar are tightened and tuned they create a great deal of tension on the top, the guitar neck and the bridge. It is that tension that allows for the vibrating strings to create tone and music sweet to the ear. But if the glue fails and the bridge pulls away from the top, the sound, the tone and music are interrupted in a devastating way. The repairman re-glued the bridge, clamped it down and let the glue dry and set to insure a tight bond that would not fail. Having repaired the bridge the guitar was restrung and ready again to make music. It was not an extremely complicated fix, but essential to the integrity of the guitar.

I find that guitars are often like my life, which was created to make beautiful music, but because of the wounds that come from disregard and the fundamental flaws of my sinful nature, there is a brokenness and fragmentation that prevents that music from being produced or heard. At times I feel like I am coming unglued. The structural integrity of my life has been compromised and things are beginning to fly apart. It is not a pleasant experience for me, nor for anyone close by me. (Imagine the glue of the bridge on that guitar failing and causing that same bridge to go flying off like a stone shot out of a sling shot…It could do significant damage and harm to those expecting to hear sweet music…)

Paul says that in Christ “all things hold together…”. When I find my life fragmented and broken it is Jesus who integrates the various parts and, like glue, holds all the parts together. Without the strength of His presence, and the perspective He has, my life will remain just broken and disintegrated parts, which cannot produce the song of beauty God created me to make. Without Jesus to hold all things in my life together, the various aspects of my life, originally intended to function for His glory could easily become weapons of destruction. But when I turn to Jesus I find the One who can hold all those parts of my life together in a meaningful and productive way. My life, held in the power of Christ’s loving embrace, can produce sweet music.

We abide in Christ so that our lives will produce the fruitful life He intends. As we cling to Jesus we find that He more so is clinging to us and holding us firmly in His grasp. And in our abiding, our clinging, all the broken parts are brought together into the meaningful whole God intends. He is the glue that holds the various parts of His design together and in doing so provides the opportunity and potential for a truly amazing song, an amazing life. My encouragement to you this day is to turn your attention to Jesus, the One who is capable of bringing integrity back to the fragments of your life and is fully capable of holding all things, including your life, together. How might you create the space in your life this day to encounter Jesus and His embrace of love that holds all things together? What spiritual practices might assist you in spending intimate time with Him? Today, as you attend to Him in that space, may you enjoy His loving, integrating and restoring presence.