Listen for the Hidden Music

Some have heard it, that song. It’s hidden, a soft and faint melody. And often we’re told this music is secret, hard to come by, undisclosed. It’s easy to confuse the two—hiddenness and secrecy—but they are different. Secrets are peddled and commoditized. Marketed to those of us in the pit as answers to all our trials and woes. Sold in all forms of pseudo-spiritual self-help books and seminars. Secrets to save you. Finely crafted wordings that hone in on our greatest insecurities, longings, and fears.

Am I a good man? Am I a failure? Do I have the strength to keep going?

Drink this cure-all, they say. Remedy all the pains of life. All for three low payments of your dignity, integrity, and self-respect. Modern-day snake-oil salesmen, preying on the hopelessness and self-doubt of a broken and lost generation.

That is not what I’m talking about—I didn’t find magic incantations or some healing potion. The music I heard wasn’t like that. And it can’t be peddled or sold or manipulated. It is just hidden. Hidden because my ears were calloused; because by all rights, I was deaf.

Hiddenness is not a clandestine operation. It is about mystery—mystery in the sense of mystical. Not the riddles or paradoxes or enigmas of hermits and gurus. The music of eternity is hidden for the sake of revealing; it is “a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began” (1 Corinthians 2:7). That’s one of the mysteries of hiddenness—unseen so as to be seen; veiled so as to be revealed. Hiddenness is about the search. The Hidden Music resounds, has resounded, as long as time itself, and longer, whether we have ears to hear it or not.

That’s what I heard. Some echo of eternity.

I heard something bigger than all my pain, all my fear, all my anger, all my cowardice. Something was calling to me. Begging to be heard. It was alluring, it was inviting. It demanded to be found.

And there lies the Hidden Grace of hitting Rock Bottom. There’s nowhere to go but out or up. I chose up.

Lord God, thank you for speaking to us in part through your Hidden Music. By Your Spirit would you awaken my senses and attune my ears to hear your beautiful voice today? Amen.