Joe Pendley is a beast...

Theme

Quick, try to think of the guitar riff at the beginning of the classic rock anthem Ironman. Now, how about AC/DC’s Back in Black, or Purple Haze by Hendrix… what about Day Tripper by the Beatles? How about movie music… can you hum the music to Indiana Jones or Star Wars? How about the beginning to Beethoven’s fifth… “Ba Ba Ba BAAAAA, Ba Ba Ba BAAAAAA.” Now surely in that vast list of classics some music just flooded into your mind, maybe even against your will as you read those words… you know what that was? Those memorable, hummable, singable little snippets of music that will now be stuck in your head for the rest of the day are known by musicians as the ‘hook’ or the ‘theme.’

A theme is just a musical idea… a melody or riff that keeps popping up in the music. It’s the signature of the piece… the part that let’s you know what you’re listening to… the thing that makes a song “catchy.” It’s the part you can’t shake out of your mind. Classical composers used to write pieces of music where the theme would appear a bunch of different times right in a row, but every time would be a little different. Maybe a different set of instruments would play the theme, making it sound different, or all the surrounding rhythms and harmonies would be varied so that you could barely recognize the theme, but the skeleton of that original, catchy little musical idea was always there right under the surface. The theme was the centerpiece, and no matter how crazy and dark the rest of the music got, the theme would always be there supporting and guiding the piece, and the theme would always come back in the end.

I have been reading the book of Job lately and one thing I have noticed is that pretty much everyone in that book (including Job) said a lot of stupid stuff. None of these guys knew why all those terrible things happened to Job and they all thought they knew. They took turns running their mouths for 37 chapters and most of what they said was a mess… Especially the young guy right at the end named Elihu. He is quite possibly one of the most arrogant people who appears in the Bible! He ran his big mouth like the rest of them, having no idea what was really going on behind the spiritual scenes. But as I was reading his egotistical rants the other day, I saw something good and true. It’s like my dad always says, “Son, even a blind hog will find the trough every now and then.”

In Job 33, verses 27-28 Elihu said, “Then he comes to men and says, I sinned, and perverted what was right, but I did not get what I deserved. He redeemed my soul from going down to the pit, and I will live to enjoy the light.” Wow! That is awesome… when I read that I decided to make that my theme… the on-going, varied, but always-there hook of my life… I have sinned, but I didn’t get what I deserved… He redeemed me… I have been rescued because of Jesus. The days may get dark and stormy and everything in my life may have seemed to change or fall in around me, but this will be at the center… this will be the guiding, supporting melody of my life… that I have not gotten what I deserve, but have been mercifully saved and outrageously loved by Christ.