Come, Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy, never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet
Sung by flaming tongues above
Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it
Mount of Thy redeeming love

This song (the version by Shane & Shane) has been on repeat in my head for sometime now. *I can imagine Chidinma nodding in agreement* The hook of the song is ‘Tune my Heart to Sing Thy Grace’. With my experience in Praise Team and musical instruments, a couple things come to mind.

You ever played or listened to someone play a guitar that was out of tune? It can be frustratingly noisy, especially for someone who knows what it should sound like. Just a string out of tune is enough to ruin a song played on a 6-stringed guitar. Also, all instruments have to be in tune with each other. Nzube learned how to play the Sax on the saxophone key of C, but for the rest musicians, he was actually playing on the key of D#. If we wanted to have a good Sax feel on a song, we all had to adjust to that Key. Imagine if we asked what Key he was playing on and he said C, and we insist on playing on that C on the keyboard and guitar instead of going to a D#, well…chaos. In fact, one Saturday, Doc and I had to even adjust the cents on the Keyboard so it can be perfectly in tune with the Sax. Being in tune cannot be overemphasized.

Only last week Saturday, we had just finished scoring the Keyboard and Electric Guitar parts to a song for the next day with Femi T’s help. Finally, the song was beginning to make sense. Time to add the Bass Guitar, and alas, it wasn’t in tune. Femi was mad! (I was secretly laughing at how he was handling the ‘situation’ of an out of tune Bass Guitar). And I get it, every instrument but one was in perfect sync. Frustrating.

What could make for an out of tune musical instrument? If you haven’t played it in a while, the strings will get lax or too tight and be out of tune. Sometimes kids (and some adults) could gain access to the instrument and play with the tuning pegs. Even people who are learning to play, in trying to tune the guitar, can end up making a mess of it. Mechanically, that stuff you wind the string on (like an anchor), could be bad, and you can tune and tune and nothing comes out of it. Any way, there is hardly an instrument that you tune once for life. Often times, you have to do it again and again.

This is just my thinking, but if a guitar could feel stuff, I don’t think it will want to be tuned. It seems like it’s easier to follow the path of least resistance. Those of you that play the guitar, imagine the process of tuning, do you think you’ll like it if you were a guitar? I can imagine the guitar saying “Oh, why am I not a desk? Why do you have to keep adjusting and adjusting?”

These are some of the things that come to mind when I sing this song. If my heart is not tuned to God, his love, I’m only a resounding gong, a clanging cymbal…an out-of-tune bass guitar. I go to Church on Sunday, pious, holy, and live through the rest of the week with no regard for the Woodsman, I may as well be the nails that scratch on the blackboard…out-of-tune. I place my hope and anchor on anything and everything but the Anchor for the soul…job, education, family, lover, hobby… I seem like I want to be tuned, but when Light is shed on that situation, all I have are idols popping up everywhere…grossly out-of-tune. I will not crave the fellowship of believers, I will not subject myself to discipleship and training, I will just coast through life…pathologically out-of-tune. I will hold on to my culture everyday and on Sunday, try to hold on to the Cross…many strings are of tune.

Imagine you go to a concert, and every single instrument is out of tune, every vocalist is singing on a uniquely different key. UTTER CHAOS…noise. It’s the same thing that happens when these same people, all harmonies coming out well, instruments on point, but their hearts are far away from the Master..Still utter chaos. Words without life. Entertainers. Pleasure driven folks. Public ‘worshipers’, private idolaters. The words we sing are not skin-deep. And we know that something is missing. It’s the hearts that are not in tune. You may score some points for scaling and vocal prowess, but the heavens aren’t applauding. I have a good idea what God thinks of it actually (Isaiah 1:11-15). You know that there is no fire in that concert, you do! Hearts are out-of-tune. One heart out of tune can ruin everything! That’s why we have to start inventing our own spirit and fire. Laughable.

Perhaps, just perhaps, that difficult situation you’re in, that you’re praying for God to take away (*because that’s only when we pray, when we need something – Genie God), is because you’re in the tuning process.

John 15:2 “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful”

For folks that love hymns done with some contemporary swag, listen to this song, ‘Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing’ by Shane and Shane.

Cheers!