discipline is freedom

I visited the Hollywood Bowl a few months back.

It was beautiful~

They played a bunch of Tchaikovsky stuff (i LOVE Tchaikovsky); they even played the sleeping beauty waltz!! <3
There was a pianist there, and though we were far, far away in the audience, we were able to see her every move on the projection screen. Her fingers danced on the keys in movements like water, and no matter how fast the piece they didn’t mis-step. There were violins who played all with one accord – bows all going up, bows all going down. The violin solo was breath-taking as the contact between the bow and the strings was kept controlled, fluid, smooth, the music flowing from that tiny wooden body to bring tears to the hardest heart. (sorry all you other instruments, these are the only ones i’m familiar with, so i didn’t really pay a lot of attention to the other ones, though they were all beautiful too.)

The thought that kept occurring in my mind was “I wonder how much they practiced. That kind of precision cannot come without discipline.” Their playing made me think of freedom. They were free to make such beautiful, controlled, willed music, but only because they chose to be disciplined. Only because they chose to limit themselves. They must have had a lot of limits – how they spent their time, the rhythm and notes of the music (not playing just whatever they felt like), the techniques that come with the instruments they play – they restricted their movements in order to create the best music possible.
That discipline made the performance all the more beautiful. It wasn’t just the finished product I was watching, but hours and hours, years and years of training, practicing, learning, making mistakes, being corrected, etc.

Our walk with the Lord is not much different, I think. It takes discipline and restriction to train our walk to become beautifully controlled. When we sleep, when we get up, when/what we eat, what we watch, what/how much we read, when we pray, when we study the word, who we talk to, etc.
Sometimes I look at seasoned Christians and they look so beautiful; the wisdom they exercise is mind-boggling because they handle Scripture accurately, but also with much fluidity – applying it to different situations while remaining within the text. (amazing)
“That looks great. I want to be like that,” I think. So haphazardly I went about imitating they way the spoke, the way they used Scripture, but without having done the work myself (I didn’t realize there was discipline behind their freedom). The result was hideous. I just became more and more self-conscious because I was more concerned about how I presented myself to others (wanting to look as attractive as the people I tried to imitate), while not handling the word accurately, or God-honoringly.

So, I am back to the word, humbled, thankful, and amazed at how much is stored in this book. There are books in this world that probably have more words in them, but the weight that all the books, all the words in this world hold cannot begin to measure up to This One.