Humans Are Tuning Forks

Humans are a little like tuning forks.

We carry a frequency within us, and whether we mean to or not,

we make the world around us vibrate.

A person who knows love has a way of making room for love. A person who has been forgiven becomes a little more generous with the failures of others. Once we encounter mercy, the space around us becomes a much more gracious and loving humming.

But it works the other way too.

A person carrying hatred can make a room feel hard before they have said a word.

A person steeped in shame may hand that shame to a child, sometimes without even knowing they have tucked it in their pocket. Hurt people quite often pass hurt along like a parcel they never meant to send. Fear becomes suspicion. Suspicion becomes cruelty. And the world around them becomes filled with hateful vibrations.

And then, sometimes, something different happens. Someone encounters Jesus. Not an idea about Jesus. Not merely a set of rules. Not a list of things they should believe.

Jesus. The One who looks at the ashamed and does not turn away. The One who meets the broken without requiring them to pretend they are not broken. The One who says, in a hundred different ways, 'You are loved', before you have managed to become lovable.

And something begins to change. Albeit slowly. The anger may still be there.

The wounds may still ache. The old patterns may still call our name. But another frequency enters the room.

Grace. And grace has a peculiar trait. It is expansive.

When we receive forgiveness, truly receive it, we begin to discover we can forgive. As we feel Christ's mercy we find ourselves becoming more merciful. When we discover our worst failure is not the final word, we becomes less interested in making someone else's failure the final word about them. Yes, as we are loved by Jesus, we begin to love differently.

Not perfectly. Good heavens, no. Christians are still humans. We spill ugliness everywhere too. We lose our tempers. We judge. We become defensive. We say things we wish we could pull back from the air. Following Jesus does not turn us into perfectly tuned instruments right away.

But we have a Master to keep tuning toward. And that is the difference. Without Jesus, we can spend our lives simply passing along whatever we have received. Love for love. Hate for hate. Shame for shame. Wound for wound.

But Jesus interrupts the pattern. He steps into the chain reaction and says, It doesn't have to go any farther. The shame can stop here. Hatred, revenge, fear can all lose their power to tune our relationships.

And a new pattern can begin. Forgiveness. Compassion. Courage. Hope. Healing.

Because this is one of the great mysteries of being human: We are changed by what we receive, and then we become part of what others receive.

Jesus teaches we are always leaving something behind. A word. A look. A little courage. A little fear. A sense that someone matters. A sense that they don't.

We may never know how far our particular vibration travels. The stranger who remembers our kindness. The child who remembers our patience. The friend who finally believes they are worth forgiving. The wounded person who discovers they don't have to wound others. We think we are simply living our lives. But we are also quietly tuning the lives around us.

For yes, humans are tuning forks.

We resonate.

We transmit.

We leave something of ourselves in the lives we touch.

So the question is not simply, What is my tune?

The deeper question is,

How does my tuning influence the hum in the room?

And, even more deeply,

What is vibrating through me? For when Christ is at the centre of us, what begins to hum sounds a little more like Him, and a little less like the broken person we have been. Grace and love and mercy vibrate through our lives in a way that can impact the world, gently, almost imperceptibly.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” — John 13:35