Monday is Thanksgiving Day in Canada, as one of my Facebook friends posted, “Because Canada always has to be first!”
The Canadian national anthem got a wonderful makeover by Canadian retailer Lululemon in 2015 that helps to illustrate the metaphor that we’ve been considering for the past few weeks: immersion in the surround-sound of Jesus.
The music in this video is made up of a medley of sounds. The hundreds of sounds that comprise the video are unrelated to each other, but each one (and the image associated with it), reflect a particular, and sometimes stereotyped, part of Canada. By themselves, these individual clips make no sense. They are too short to provide much information; they are disconnected and unrelated. If you don’t know the music—when you don’t recognize the melody—you have trouble figuring out how the puzzle fits together. Everything seems random.
Unless …
Unless you know the song. Unless you can hear the music. Unless you recognize that everything is related, and everything fits.
Only when you know the tune to the Canadian anthem, does this video makes sense. Knowing the tune helps you recognize how each of the individual pieces link together to make a whole. You are able to connect the dots; you fill in the gaps to make sense of the bits and pieces.
When you listen for, and recognize, the Jesus tune, you begin to see how everything becomes part of the melody and the harmony. Things that seemed disconnected, actually have a place. In the song of the Trinity, everything fits together. All of the separate, inconsistent, random parts of life weave together to make beautiful music.
This video makes me smile. Enjoy the mountains, lakes, cities, fish, geese, caribou, plaid, trains, hockey, and Tim Hortons!