When I was a child, music was not my strength—but it was still my joy.
It still isn’t, to be honest. I can’t hold a key or stay on rhythm to save my life.
But back then, I didn’t know that mattered. I just knew I loved being part of the sound.
At St. John’s in Salem, our choirmaster, Mr. Robin, somehow always knew.
He never scolded me, never asked me to step aside.
He simply smiled and said, “Just sing, Sam. Be part of the sound.”
One of the songs he taught us was “Have Thine Own Way, Lord.”
He sang the Jim Reeves version—smooth, tender, and full of that quiet ache that somehow made surrender sound safe.
It reminded me of the Christmas records my grandfather used to play all year long.
The warmth of that music became my happy place, a steady hum of peace beneath the noise of growing up.
Even now, it’s still the sound I return to.
The techs at my MRI clinic know this—without a word, they cue up Christmas music no matter the season.
Spring, summer, or fall, I lie there in that narrow tunnel listening to the same carols I once heard drifting from my grandfather’s old speaker, and something inside me settles.
I didn’t know it then, but Mr. Robin was teaching me something far beyond music.
He was showing me what grace sounds like—how it holds space even for those who can’t find the note, how it makes room for presence over perfection.
Maybe that’s what God does too. Maybe faith is less about mastering the song and more about joining the choir, trusting that the Spirit will tune us toward harmony in time.
Now, as I walk through this season of discernment, I find myself humming that old refrain again.
I don’t always feel qualified. I don’t always know if I’m singing the right part. But still, I’m being invited to show up—to lend my voice, however uncertain, to something larger than myself.
Maybe that’s what calling really is.
Not being the best singer in the room, but being willing to be part of the music.
To let God compose through us, even when we can’t see the score.
And in that quiet composition, I see how the Spark—the Christ of Proximity—has been doing exactly that.
Slowly, patiently, He has been molding me into who I am today, one uneven note at a time.
Not through performance, but through presence.
Not by demanding harmony, but by teaching me to listen for it.
Like clay that has grown dry and rigid with time, I too have known seasons where I resisted the hands that shaped me.
But grace has a way of finding the cracks.
Just a little water, a little warmth—and what seemed hardened begins to soften again.
The clay comes alive. The shape renews anew.
It strikes me how one of the very first toys children play with is clay—soft, shapeless, full of possibility.
In those early hours of pressing, rolling, and shaping, we touch the mystery of creation itself.
But somewhere along the way, we traded wonder for order.
We stopped seeing formation as play and began to treat faith as performance.
What a missed opportunity that has been.
Because the Potter’s work is not about control; it’s about communion.
About returning, again and again, to that holy curiosity we once had in our hands.
Maybe that’s all faith really is:
letting grace make us pliable once more.
Letting the Potter have His own way.
Have Thine own way, Lord.
Shape me, still me, use me.
Until all I am becomes part of Your song.