What's the soundtrack of your life?

Have you ever considered how significant a role the musical score plays in your experience of watching a movie? What if your favourite movie lacked any music whatsoever, and was just a bland concert of movements and words? What if Steven Spielberg tapped-in someone other than John Williams for Jurrasic Park? What if the Lion King didn't have the musical vision of Hans Zimmer? Not only your experience of it, but the movie itself would be significantly affected.

Music effortlessly carries emotion in a way that words alone struggle to. Even the best actors rely on musically informed inflections to capture more than the words of their script have the ink to.

In anatomical terms, the director supplies the body of a movie, but it's the composer that brings out the heart and soul. Just a few notes from a beloved movie's soundtrack is enough to cause a rush of emotions and memories to flood in.

I'll never forget the day I learned how profound and visceral an effect music can have on our experience of life. I was about eight or 10 years old and I was driving with my dad. He had the local jazz station playing as the twilight hour was giving way to dusk. The summer evening breeze was rushing in through the cracked windows and my seat was reclined just enough so that I melted into it as I gazed out the window and my thoughts were lifted up to the emerging stars.

While I wasn't looking, my dad- thinking this was the perfect time for some hands-on learning- turned the radio dial to the hip-hop station. In a moment, the music switched from serene saxophone to bombastic bass. My body tensed up, a gap was created between my now erect back and the still reclined seat, and I turned my head to see his subtle smile. His tactic was clearly successful, since I'm recalling this event three decades later. Knowing me to be a music junky, he went on to school me about the physiological effect- for good or ill- of the music we submerse ourselves in.

You may not be the musical type, but there is another kind of score that plays in the background of your biographical plot: your thoughts. In the same way that the instruments of a movies soundtrack dictate in large measure whether it's a tragedy or a comedy, so to do your thoughts.

As we experience life from day to day, it isn't as though each event meets with a blank canvas in our mind to be interpreted objectively and factually. Instead, our thoughts become a sort of HR manager, interviewing each experience and conversation to determine what role it will play in the life of our mind.

This is why the Apostle Paul tells us "Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." (Philippians 4:8). As our minds are stayed on these things, they have a way of filtering our experiences so that the result is "the God of peace will be with you." (Philippians 4:9). If a man writing from a prison cell with potential execution awaiting shares his secret to having peace in trying circumstances, we would do well to heed.

This work sometimes takes a holy violence to be successful. We're told in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to "destroy arguments and...take every thought captive" that would seek to steal from us what we know to be true of our God. He is sovereign over all and causes "all things work together for good." (Romans 8:28). Now there's a track to keep on repeat!

As we rehearse the truth it becomes the population of our mind, and a loyal defender of our soul. It becomes the filter through which we interpret every victory and failure- neither letting us swell with pride nor drown in sorrow. It becomes a rock upon which we stand when the winds blow (Matthew 7:25) and an anchor which secures us in the tempestuous sea of deceit (Ephesians 4:14).

The Bible speaks to life in this real world, and helps us to interpret the devastating betrayals, the heart-wrenching losses, the humiliating failures and the painful rejections. It tells us of the coda (Revelation 21-22) which will relieve the plot of any tension and richly reward those who make it to the end of the score with the song of Jesus still ringing in their heart.

Know the truth; sing the truth; live the truth; think the truth; and the truth will set you free from the minor chords of this tragic world.