Some of you may know that I grew up with jazz as the primary musical influence in my house. While other kids’ parents were listening to whatever they were listening to, on the big console stereo in our living room artists like Basie, Ellington, Ella, Brubeck and Kenton were the standard fare. I remember my father lying on the floor in front of the speaker, so he could hear some intricate harmony better. I learned to love the dissonant chords of jazz, and to appreciate what a soloist could create as he or she improvised their way through the “changes” of a jazz tune. As a young person, I met many Twin Cities jazz musicians, and, if truth be told, spent way more time in smoky bars than most kids my age. It was all about the music. Jazz has many moods; it can fly the listener through a stratosphere filled with ebullient notes and rhythms, it can walk gently through a melodic garden filled with musical color, and it can sit in the gutter to wail and cry a mournful melody. I never cease to be amazed by the giants of jazz—their amazing ears, their ability to hear a riff where most of us could not even hum a couple of notes; their sense of time and ability to bring order out of chaos. I am awed by what they can do with only 12 notes. Is there a point to all this, you ask? Why yes, I say. In the rich chords, the haunting melodies, the talented musicians; in the improvisation and the complex structures, I see an image of God. I see God, who doesn’t give us a life with straight quarter notes; who makes life rich and complex and sometimes gives us “notes” that sound strange together when we first hear them, but as we live them out they become beautiful. I see God, who moves through our lives with grace and beauty, as a melody moves from one instrument to another, being changed and embellished as it goes. I see a Creative God, who spun the universe from nothing and, like the soloist, continues to create and make new all the time. I see God, who like the bass and drums, holds the rhythms of our lives together even when everyone seems to be doing their own thing. Whether or not you share my love of jazz, whether you have ever heard of Mulligan or Desmond or Parker, perhaps you too can reflect on the complex, rich, melodic, fresh, rhythmical, alluring nature of our God. Where do you see such a God in your life?