John Denver, The Muppets, and Broken Organs...

So I was listening to "John Denver and the Muppets" Christmas album in the car with my kids today.  

Those songs are so fun.  

In between the verses of "Silent Night," John Denver tells the story/legend of how the song was written. He explains that on December 24, 1818 Joseph Mohr journeyed to the home of musician-schoolteacher Franz Gruber and asked him to add a melody and guitar accompaniment to his poem of Silent Night. The story goes that the church organ was broken and so they needed some other form of accompaniment in order to sing the song at Midnight Mass.  Well, Franz Gruber was able to come up with a melody and a guitar part, and later that night, they,  backed by the choir, stood in front of the main altar in St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria, and sang "Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!" for the first time.  

And 180 years later, it is sung in different countries and languages all around the world, as a message of love, joy, and brotherhood.  

I was thinking today about the significance of the broken organ.  What if the organ had just worked like it was "supposed to" and they had just done their usual thing that night?  Maybe that song never would have been written.  It's hard to think of Christmas without "Silent Night," isn't it?  I bet they didn't have any idea, when they were fretting about how to fix the organ, what an unimaginable impact their new song, written as a solution to their problem, would have on the world for centuries to come. 

As I pondered this, thoughts came to my mind of other broken things. Broken expectations, broken relationships, broken faith, broken health... and I wondered how we might be surprised if we could see the future impact of the way we overcome our broken things.  Whatever it is that's broken has a way of channeling us toward something else, oftentimes leading to a solution or a joy that we never could have imagined. 

So, if you feel like you have a "broken organ" right now--have faith.  Keep looking for a new way to approach your responsibilities.  You might need to think outside the box.  You might need to find a friend who can help you.  And, you might be lead to something incredible because of it.  

K, the end.