Take up your harp and follow me.

23 Whenever the spirit from God came upon Saul, David would take his harp and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.

I'm reading a book from Oliver Sacks "Musicophilia", he is the author of the movie awakenings with Robin Williams. In his book I've been reading how music effects the brain. Oliver gives countless case examples of people becoming suddenly musical and also some who have seizures when listening to music. There is a profound power in music that can change the way we think, believe and the way our body reacts. In the case of Saul his mind is plagued with an evil spirit that the Lord has sent upon him for his rebellion against God's word. To clarify my view is that God had not sent a spirit as in an evil, ghostly, heavenly being, but if you read the footnotes it says an injurious spirit. That spirit is the injury or wound that would happen when the Spirit of the Lord has departed from someone. It said when the spirit of the Lord had departed from saul then he was plagued with the injury in his mind.

David came with the spirit of the lord and brought his instrument to set at ease the mind of his king. Whenever david played the kings countenance changed. Unfortunately the healing that david provided was only temporary. If this was not so then david would only of had to play once. There was a cycle that was happening with saul that was more of a downward spiral, evoking great anger to the point of throwing a javelin at David. The music could cure the distress but not the cause of the distress. Which leads me to the current harp and bowl ministries that are arising across the nation. The music can in fact act as a curative measure to the state of man when coupled with different ingredients. I can not deny the fact that music could cure someone on it's own by triggering motives and emotions in peoples mind and spirit. Yet I believe the transformative powers of music are most potent when coupled with three things. The willingness and openness of the distressed person to the therapeutic process, the quality of the music to meet the individual needs, and the musician's commitment to the distressed person.

For the church we need to expand the quality of our services to better meet the needs of the people, we need to provide higher commitment and communicate that commitment to the people, but without the desire of the people to want change all this is for not. We are definitely not all musicians but we all have our own God given tool to effect change. So we have our own harp to use, Jesus said "take up your cross and follow me". He could of also said take up your instrument of change and follow me. So that's what I'm doing, I'm committed to seeing change in the people we serve and to the quality of music that I provide. My faith is being placed in God that he will use the gifting to His pleasure. So God be praised forever, and with any luck it will be very creative!