Life in a Minor Key

Music and the Art of Storytelling

We all have those songs that remind us of our childhood. Thoughts of these songs sometimes bring with them smells and tastes, the faces of long-forgotten friends. Songs can also conjure up regrets. Maybe it is the thing we never got to say to someone or the things we never did with a loved one now gone. We may even get sad feelings from an upbeat song because of the good memories that we no longer share, memories we have left to only ourselves. 

There is a powerful association between sounds and feelings. The feelings are reinforced with the words that a song uses to communicate meaning. It is one thing to hear a piece of classical music in a minor or major key. While these can indeed be moving, and many times much more moving than the music of today, it is another thing altogether to hear lyrics that seem to articulate an experience in your life. The words resonate with you. Whether a song about being in love, naturally in the major key, or about losing a loved one, played in a minor key, the combination of instrumentation and words are quite the dynamic duo.

From Story to Song

What makes a good song great is the storytelling. It is both an art and a skill to describe things in such a way that draws the reader or listener into the experience itself. This is the key ingredient to music that is remembered for more than the beat (that phenomenon deserves its own article).

There are songs that describe something so well that you are drawn to feel with the writer, even if it is something that you have never personally experienced. Their experience somehow rubs off on you and leaves a mark as if spilling over from one heart to another. I have found this to be true mostly of sad songs in my own life, but I may just be speaking for myself.

Not Another Happy Ending

Because of the way people work and the diversity of cultures, the art of poetry and storytelling has changed shape over time. Sometimes the rules and expectations vary from one culture to another. One interesting aspect of our particular culture compared to some others is the perceived need for resolve—for a happy ending. Happy endings give us hope. They highlight the highs of life and are best sung in a major key. 

 But what happens when you are living life in a minor key? What will you do with all the pain and suffering? What do we say when the story and the song don’t seem to resolve but leave us in a fog of helplessness and wandering in the dark? What do we make of our unhappy endings?

Consider the Author

When you come to the end of your life, when the conclusion is in print, when you look back at every tear, every regret, every disappointment… who wrote it? Who wrote your story? Are you the author? That might explain a whiff of it. But what about all the pain? Were you in control there and if not, then who?

Was it a collaborative effort? An open forum like Wikipedia? Did you write some of it, others wrote parts of it, and God was merely the moderator who approved the latest edition? Is God merely the editor of your story? Or is God the author? Is God the author of your pleasure and your pain? Is God the one in charge? 

A Christian must say both yes and amen. God is the author of our lives. He has written every moment. He has counted every tear. Nothing comes to him as a surprise. He has orchestrated all of your highest joys and your deepest darkness. It is He who gave you those scars. It is He who took that one thing that you treasured most. It is He who gave it in the first place. It is also He who will restore and wipe away and redeem and renew all things in the final deliverance and redemption of all things.

That pristine paradise with streets of gold and pearly gates, that was His idea and it is your reward. Part of it, at least. But our greatest reward is dwelling with the one who wrote the story of our lives. Full and free in the presence of our Maker.

Life in a Minor Key: Resolved

Here and now it is not all happy endings. Sometimes we live life in a minor key. But even our bluest of notes, our most tragic movements and motives will be fully resolved on that day. And the eternal praises will ring a major triumph for the author and all his children.

The Author of our story is the one who wrote the song of all time. It is one that has been written in red, not on stone or paper, but on our hearts. Our ending is secured by the life, death, and resurrection of the protagonist of the story and our chief worship leader, Jesus Christ himself. You see, you and I are not the main characters in our story. Christ is. This is all about him. Our not-so-happy endings in this life are resolved in the story of all things that has already been written but is still unfolding. 

Like every story, there are different sides represented. Which side of the story are you on? Will you be found standing with or against the Protagonist? Will your life resolve in the major key of redemption or will it remain eternally dissonant? If your life is hidden in the Trinitarian harmony of redemption, then every minor movement is worth living. You can live life in a minor key while fixing your eyes on the One who wrote it all.