While growing up our family car rides always included singing. Our parents had been in a quartet in college and both my mother and father had beautiful singing voices. They could harmonize on any song – even while learning a new song – which still amazes me to this day. How do you harmonize to a melody you are hearing for the first time?!

So while we traveled we sang. The majority if our songs were hymns and gospel songs, although we sang lots of “camp fire” tunes and sing-a-longs. I always sang the melody – someone had to. My brothers can also harmonize, but I never developed that talent. I always stuck to the melody because that is what I heard in my head.

Our family traveled quite a bit when I was small. We went to South Dakota one summer where my father taught at the Wheaton College Science Station in the Black Hills. We lived in Boulder, Colorado the year I was in third grade because my father attended University of Colorado on a National Science Foundation Grant. Then we traveled to North Carolina beginning in 1958 in the summer where my father worked as a seasonal ranger for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. When my parents bought a campground in North Carolina with another family from Wheaton, the Days, and we traveled back and forth to the mountains of North Carolina three times a year, staying each summer from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

I LOVED those trips in the car! We would sing for many miles taking turns to pick the songs we would sing. As my brothers and I got older we sang lots of folk songs – Peter, Paul, and Mary were my favorites. My father particularly enjoyed the Southern Gospel Songs and looking back, I realize now it was probably because of the harmony in those songs.

When I hear voices united in harmony it touches me deeply. There is something so special in hearing various voices singing different parts that join together to make harmony. The Cambridge dictionary defines harmony as – a pleasing combination of different parts, peaceful agreement between people, or the simultaneous sounding of musical notes to create a pleasant sound.

In music that “simultaneous sounding of musical notes to create a pleasant sound” is plainly evident to most people. Our ears cringe when we hear notes that don’t blend in – it is not pleasant! There are some people who are “tone deaf”. These individuals don’t hear notes blend or notice when they don’t. Generally speaking most of us recognize music that is in harmony and we also know when it is not.

I was pondering this after reading John 17 during our Bible study last week. This is the chapter where Jesus prays for us before he is arrested and eventually crucified. Jesus prays for us – verse 20 says –

20 “I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. 21 I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

Jesus is praying that we will be ONE – in harmony – why? Jesus knows he will be crucified, buried, and rise again ultimately returning to his Father in heaven. Yet in the midst of this agony he faces, Jesus prays for us – ” All who will ever believe in me”.

Jesus wants us to be ONE – in harmony – so that the world will believe God sent Jesus. Just as we know if notes are sung or played in harmony – the world recognizes if the followers of Jesus are living in harmony. The part of the definition of harmony that fits here is – peaceful agreement between people. When the world sees the Body of Christ – the Church – attacking one another – fusing and fighting over doctrine or Biblical interpretations it is obvious there is no harmony. Why would the world believe that God sent Jesus to save the world when his children can’t live in harmony and love one another?

These are divisive times in our world, our country, our community, and even in families. The Lord has convicted me with my own thoughts and actions. How I am responding to his desire that I live in harmony with my brothers and sisters in Christ? Do I let issues drive a wedge between me and my fellow Christians? Do I let anything bring disharmony into my family?

Jesus prayed that we would be ONE as he and the Father are ONE.

I can be a part of answering Jesus’ prayer by living in harmony with my family and my sisters and brothers in Christ.