Harmony

I was walking beside the sea yesterday. On the water’s edge was this stone with ‘harmony’ written on it.

Life’s rhythm has a time for sowing, a time for reaping; a time for weeping and a time for laughing…

Life’s melody, our words and actions, priorities and character, creates beautiful tunefulness or tuneless monotony…

Harmony comes when different sounds occur at the same time and blend well together.

Yesterday I listened to Lennon-McCartney harmonies with the Beatles; tonight ‘The Last Night of the Proms’ will bring harmony – an orchestra where each instrument plays its part, a choir of different voices…

We could muse on harmony in nature and the environment; the discord brought by global warming or pollution…

Eddie Askew writes: ‘Peace – shalom – in the Bible is … ‘the harmony of a caring community informed at every point by its awareness of God’. It embraces the whole of life and works out in a whole network of right relationships…’  

Another Greek word, ‘homothymadon’, occurs in Acts 1: we read ‘They all joined together constantly in prayer.’ Lawrence Richards says ‘It is a word which pictures the church gathered – praying, worshiping, reaching decisions – in a spirit of unity and harmony.’

We have seen harmony in our communities: the NHS working as a team, support services co-operating, schools and parents working for the good of our children.

We have all seen the beauty of harmony in family life, and the destructive force of no harmony in a home.

Musing on achieving harmony:

• Play your part – You are important; only you can play your part.
• Appreciate others – each is unique and has a unique part to play.
• Listen – to your part and the part of others.
• Practice balance – your part must not be so loud that it drowns out others or so quiet that it is unnoticed.
• Be purposeful; harmony doesn’t happen accidentally.