Tune My Heart

My church sang out of tune on Easter.

We always do.

It made me wonder if it is like the old hymn says: Does God tune our hearts?

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.

When my children tune their instruments, they occasionally tune by ear. The result is never as exact as when they use a tuner.

If they tune by ear and try to play together, they create a discordant sound that causes me to wince. Everyone has their own definition of C. When we tune our hearts using some standard of our own creation, the discordant sound jars God’s ears, perhaps even causing Him to wince.

However, His Word is like a tuner, giving a perfect reading of the condition of our hearts.

It is always uncomfortable when our hearts are out of tune. It means that they will need to be changed, adjusted, and stretched in order to make a harmonious sound that’s in accordance with God’s Word.

As we sang out of tune Sunday, I glanced around. There were several people present who have terminal illnesses, yet they sang about the resurrected Christ with joy on their faces. They have been changed and stretched in ways that I would want to avoid, yet they have received the tuning in such a way as to make their worship of the Lord beautiful.

Their hearts have been tuned by the parts of God’s Word that say, “He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” and “in Christ shall all be made alive,” and “What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.”

We are all sentenced to death because we have tuned our hearts to the wrong things: a drug, a drink, pleasure, self, idols of our own making. We are out of tune. Our condition is terminal. We will all die.

However, my friends who worship despite their diagnoses demonstrate God’s ability to tune hearts. When they praise Him, their focus is no longer on themselves, their condition, or their fears. Instead, He tunes their hearts and produces joy, fitting them for their eternal home with Him in heaven.

They have found the true Tuner of hearts, and now they sing His song. It helps to tune the rest of our hearts so that we can be in perfect unison.

Then, together we sing of His grace- favor undeserved- that has changed us from who we used to be, dead in our sins, to who He meant us to be all along, alive and radiating His joy.

Now, no matter what we sound like when we sing, our hearts have been tuned so that our lives will sing beautifully, tuned just right every time by the Maker of hearts to reach even more who are in need of His tuning.