Tugging at Your Heart (and Harp) Strings
May 2006
We wind our way through the narrow streets of Chicago’s West Side, and as the “L” rumbles overhead, we know we are out of our element. Then my daughter shouts, “There it is!” and points to the burgundy awning of the Lyon & Healy Harp factory.
For the next hour, a ten-year old daughter and her forty-year old father watch in awed silence as master craftsmen turn pieces of sitka spruce and tight-grained mahogany into some of the world’s most exquisite instruments. We watch with quiet respect as chunks of wood are sawed, turned, glued, clamped, chiseled, painted, lacquered and gilded.
Up three stories we climb in what many regard as the greatest harp factory in the world. I am entranced by a group of workers who are producing something greater than the mere sum of their parts. A symphony is being played and their instruments are lathes, band saws, planer and sanders.
Eight years later we returned to the same factory. This time things are different. My daughter now brings her harp for regulation, a final tune up for a senior recital. The young girl is now a young woman. Things have changed for me as well. The stairs seem a bit longer and steeper.
The factory is different, too. The burgundy awning is still there, but you no longer step through the door and into the showroom. “The showroom has been moved upstairs,” I am told. Yes, indeed it has. Now you don’t get to see the finished product until the end of the tour, unless you take the express elevator right to the top. Get off on the fourth floor and make a left. You will then be dazzled as well-placed lights cast their spell over sixty of the world’s finest harps. Take your pick. Choose your wood and color, size and shape.
What did I learn from this second trip to the factory?
I once heard a preacher say, “This world is just the workroom. The showroom is upstairs.” His point? This life is the prelude to something greater. You have to go through the sawing, chiseling, gluing and clamping before you get to the showroom. The sawdust and fumes are all part of the necessary process to get to the showroom floor. As they say, “No pain. No gain.”
Though the folks at Lyon & Healy likely don’t consider themselves theologians, they got their theology right when they “moved the showroom upstairs.” Glorification follows sanctification and not the other way around.
But, I ask, “Is that how we like it?” If we are honest, we sometimes wish the showroom was still on the first floor, right inside the door. Who wants to mess with all the sanding, fitting and re-fitting? Who has the patience for the intricate carving, not to mention the gilding with those fragile flakes of gold? Who wants to wear safety goggles and breathe through a mask? We grow tired of the refining process and want heaven’s joy now “I'm tired of being refined,” we sigh. Enough already.
“Not interested in the factory tour? Just take the express elevator and push number four. It will take you right to the top,” the receptionist intones. That’s how a lot of people want their sanctification: take the express elevator and get right to the showroom floor. No bending of wood. Skip all the scraping. No refashioning. No hang time drying. No need to apply a second coat. Take me to the bright lights. Now.
There is only one problem. Perhaps the owner of the factory moved the showroom upstairs for a reason. Maybe He knows what He is doing. We think it would be easier to have the showroom immediately accessible on the ground floor, maybe easier isn’t always better in the long run.
There is a final kicker from the theologians at Lyon & Healy. There is more than a showroom now on the fourth floor. I crack open a door and find a beautiful concert hall, with a huge picture window perfectly framing the Chicago skyline.
I pick up a program left on one of the seats—just two nights ago these old brick walls and polished wood floor were graced by the music of one of the harp world’s masters. “It was beautiful,” our host proudly says. “A great evening.”
Here is the point. Sanctification for sanctification’s sake would be pointless. All this refining—for what? No, there must be more to life than just the factory. There must be a fourth floor. There must be glory coming. But what is glory? Is it the bright lights and lines of elegant harps, quietly arrayed? Is the glory the showroom where money talks, but the music is not heard? The goal certainly is not just to make instruments, but neither is it just to sell them.
The glory of the fourth floor is the concert hall. The glory of Lyon & Healy is when the instruments are played and enjoyed. The glory is when the strings are plucked, the music is heard, hearts stirred and beauty tasted.
One day, the sanding and scraping will be over. We will lay down our safety glasses and masks. No more chiseling and restringing. We will be ushered upstairs and the music will begin. Our sanctification will turn to glorification . . . . in the concert hall.
On that day we won’t just be watching, listening and applauding while others play their instruments. All who are in Christ will sing and play like we never have before.
And the music will never come to an end.