There’s a certain kind of supple tenderness in today’s offertory anthem. It’s by Walter Pelz, a Lutheran composer who spent most of his professional life as professor of music at one of Kansas’ oldest institutes of higher learning, Bethany College. The Lutheran composers have a certain aesthetic that’s hard to describe. We’ve sung others like “Beautiful Savior” by F. Melius Christiansen, or “Stay with Us” by Egil Hovland. But when you hear these kinds of pieces, they really touch your soul. They take you away from any sense of time, allowing you to bathe yourself in soothing melodies and velvety harmonies.

All sacred music runs the gamut of theological concept of who God is, from the sublime and mystic to the simple and “down to earth.” At first, sacred music seemed distant. In ancient times, if you listen to chant, organum, or even Renaissance polyphony, you hear the esoteric nature of God, the great mystic, unamenable being somewhere out in the universe. Through the reformation, the music begins to point to God as personal, but at an arm’s length. Then, with the evangelical movement God becomes our best friend, making it hard to tell the difference between music for church or something you’d hear in Opryland!

I love how Walter Pelz helps us get into the words themselves. In other words, it makes God relevant, near, and applicable. It reminds us that peace is not conditional. The kind of peace we hear ensouled in this music is not dependent on circumstance. It’s God-like, an intelligence that sees beyond duality – rich/poor; good/bad; happy/sad, etc. So, the music has this supple undulation to it. It ebbs and flows, like the tide, but underneath it is a foundation of harmonic union. It’s much like life itself, but to find the peace of Christ, you have to go under the surface to explore the vastness of the soul.

When you transcend the worldly hang-ups of what “makes” you happy or sad, you’ve got it. You’ve started your undersea adventure. So-called worldly peace comes from the crest of a wave, when things are going well. Unrest comes when the wave goes back out, and things aren’t going well. Then we worry and stew and panic for the next wave, but it does no good. The waves come and go on their own, and we must depend on God’s everlasting peace to remain with us during the ups and downs of life’s wavy surface.

This is a principle of the universe. If you understand this truth, you can live from that deeper place of peace, traversing dualistic living that causes people great suffering. God’s peace transcends crests and troughs, because it’s underneath everything that’s more substantial. This music points us to the deep end, so to speak, the real source of God’s peace. From that oceanic viewpoint, it doesn’t matter too much what’s happening on the shoreline. You just appreciate the waves coming and going, but the key isn’t to try to hold onto them. Hold onto your peace instead. Stay in the deep end – but don’t go off the deep end. It’s all OK. It’s one, beautiful happening of the ocean moving in and out on the shoreline of your existence. Soli Deo Gloria!