Tuning Up Annual Conference

I was taught to tune my guitar starting with the thickest string.

Once its sound matched my teacher’s guitar, then he showed me how to tune the one next to it.

It’s easy.  Kinda.  At least the idea is easy to grasp, even to the third grader version of me he was teaching.

He had me put a fingertip on the in-tune string at the fifth metal bar on the neck.  That piece of metal is called a fret.

That note, and the next string’s “open,” meaning “not fretted,” sound should match.

Strumming them both together, it was easy to tell when they weren’t producing the same note.

Fixing that problem wasn’t as easy.  I was learning a lot more than guitar playing.

Today is the start of the 2014 annual meeting of The Illinois Great Rivers Conference of The United Methodist Church.  What I learned about tuning a guitar is true of us as well: it’s obvious when we clash, but we have to come together and agree on a foundation before we can begin to have harmony.  But that takes effort and change.

Pray with me that our Annual Conference will get in tune.