A Word About Practice and Rehearsal

I’ve spent a good part of my life around music. Pianos, choirs, instrumentalists. Warm-ups, run-throughs. I’ve made notes on the pages of music that ultimately become something you can actually hear. And over time, I’ve come to believe that there’s a difference between practice … and dress rehearsals.

Practice starts and stops, I think. You hit a wrong note, you stop so you can go back.
If the music is particularly challenging, you might even slow things down a bit. When you’re practicing, you work on that one measure that keeps tripping you up. Practice is arduous, and repetitive, and most of the time private and without an audience. Practice comes before what I’d call dress rehearsal.

But dress rehearsals?

Dress rehearsals are different. People wear special costumes or clothing. Orchestra members wear formal dress. The music doesn’t stop, unless the wheels are totally coming off the wagon. Play the music straight through, start to finish. Make it as close to the real thing as possible, so you can get a feel for how the actual performance is going to come off. Both elements are important in the polishing and perfecting of music. Practice. Then dress rehearsal. 

I think both elements have a place in our lives in Kingdom living, too.

I think life might be less like practice and more like rehearsal. Not rehearsal for perfection. Just rehearsal for something that looks like the real thing in Kingdom living.

The Scripture says in Hebrews that “we have no lasting city here, but we seek the city that is to come.” And Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.”

I’m convinced the conversations and actions we engage in today are dress rehearsals for the kind of things we’ll get to play and sing in eternity.The rehearsing I do today with Jesus, living out the life of Christ in front of a watching world, however halting, however imperfect, is a dress rehearsal for a performance that will never end. Over time, the longer I walk with Jesus, the more opportunity I have to learn the music of my life well.

Paul said it this way: “Train yourself for godliness.” (1 Tim. 4:7-8) Not perform. Not pretend.
Train.Which sounds a lot like practice, doesn’t it? 

Perhaps the real mystery is this:We practice …
so that we can rehearse. And we rehearse …
because one day, the curtain will rise.

And what we have lived, quietly and imperfectly, will find its fulfillment in an eternity far more exciting than we ever imagined. An audience in Heaven!