becoming

A parable on Friendship
(in response to Hilda’s post)

A collector found a faded manuscript of music.

The collector calls a friend who is a musician. When he sees the manuscript his eyes light up for the handwriting is Mozart’s. But then he seems confused, so the collector asks what he is thinking.

“Well it looks like Mozart, but I am not familiar with the piece.” So they sit down at a piano and he begins to play it. It begins beautifully and sounds like just the sort of thing Mozart would have composed, but then as he continues to play there are places where not much happens. The piano is simply keeping time and further along there are periods of rest.

And it begins to dawn on them that what they have found is indeed a previously undiscovered Mozart piece, but piano accompaniment. The other parts are no where to be found and there is no way they can be recreated. So while what they have is quite remarkable it is also frustratingly incomplete.

The piano music only makes sense when its incompleteness is acknowledged.*

While the original parable was told to help us realize that we see our faith only in part, it is just as true to reveal our need for one another in true Friendship and Fellowship.

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* A story told by NT Wright in his book Simply Christian (New York: Harper Collins, 2006) pp. 39-40.