Shakespeare - known around the Globe.

I think I might be getting older. Uff-dah.

Speaking of aging, gravity is a cruel master.

Tomorrow our series on the life of Joseph gets to his plan for saving up during the seven years of plenty so Egypt has resources to get through the subsequent seven years of famine. What an amazing idea! 'spose anybody in D.C. has read these chapters in Genesis? Doesn't look like it.

Replaced a garbage disposal and fixed sink leaks in a rental house this morning.

This particular builder used off-brand everything. A week ago I worked on locksets made by a manufacturer I'd never heard of. Junk. Ever heard of "Whirlaway" disposals? Me either. Plastic junk. Not surprisingly, a builder who uses cheap materials also uses cheap labor. The basket on the other side of the sink barely had any putty at all and the two pieces hadn't been tightened adequately. It had been leaking for some time.

If you ever go looking at a house to buy take the time to look at the materials used. Is the door hardware made by Schlage or Kwikset...or Fred? Faucets a brand you recognize (and one of their more substantial models)? The toilet? If they cut corners one place they did the same elsewhere.

FWIW.

On the way into that job I had the classical music station playing. For whatever reason it made me think of a story I heard years ago about Itzhak Perlman.

When classical soloists go into a city for a concert they go several days early to rehearse with the orchestra with which they'll be playing. That orchestra has been working on the concert pieces for weeks, so it's just a case of fine tuning the specifics with the soloist. The really big names typically also offer what are called "master classes." In the case of a violinist like Perlman (a really pleasant, engaging man) the very best young violinists of the area are invited to attend the class where they'll play a piece for him, after which he'll critique their playing. It's a huge honor to be invited to a master's class with a top tier musician, but there's also considerable pressure.

Years ago I heard Perlman interviewed and he talked about doing one of those master's classes while performing in China. He said he listened to a young lady play a very difficult and challenging piece flawlessly. She hit every note, her pitch was spot-on, the rhythm precise...her performance was technically perfect. And that, Perlman said, was the problem.

In this interview he explained that her performance lacked any personality, any passion. She played the notes on the page but nothing more. It didn't come from her soul.

He said he told her to sing a section of the piece, and she did so beautifully. Then he told her to play the entire piece again, this time in the same way she would sing it. Suddenly her playing was filled with life, with personality, with passion. She still played all the notes, but they came alive as they became hers, not just marks on the page.

OK, I confess, I got emotional listening to that interview and can feel it within me even as I type this. What a wonderful thing to give a young musician the gift of music.

This morning, as I thought about that story, I found myself thinking about some believers. For them the Christian life is like notes on the page. They live it with precision and attention to every detail. They know God's Word, how to put it into practice, and they do so with diligence.

And lifelessness.

That's too bad. They're missing the life and joy of being a child of God. It's not about precision, it's about living in the vitality of the Holy Spirit. Yes, there are notes; we don't get to free-form it and play whatever strikes us at the moment. But if those notes are ours, if they come from the inside as invigorated by the Holy Spirit, what comes out will be far more beautiful than any legalistic adherence to the ink on the page.

That's another problem with a technically precise but spiritually dead interpretation of the Christian life. Those people tend to judge others by that same standard of precision. They're not a lot of fun to be around. It's hard to criticize them because they have everything "right." But it's a cold kind of right. I may not be entirely comfortable with the way my Spirit-led brother or sister plays the music, but assuming they're playing the notes the Composer penned I'm glad to see it's theirs.

I recognize that my personality type is inclined to precision. As I get older I'm learning the joy of living the music, not just playing it. And granting others the permission to live the same music differently.

OK, sorry for waxing homiletic. It's just been rolling around in my head all day.