Don’t Put Your Life on Shuffle

Ever stop to wonder what your worship service would look like on the iPod Shuffle?

You could have a select number of individuals pick their top favorite two or three or ten songs and put them all on a Shuffle. Then to start the worship service you could just press play. Crazy, no?

But isn’t that what it looks like when you don’t give the worship service the attention it deserves? When you don’t pray before making your song selection? When you don’t take time to reflect on what the LORD is doing in the service? When you don’t allow the Spirit the direct you to make a change in the middle of the song service while you’re leading it?

Consider the evolution of recorded music. From LPs to cassettes to CDs to the iWorld. Certainly I don’t want to leave out eight tracks or 78s but if they receive short shrift in my estimation it’s because I have had practically zero experience with them. But with the thematic possibility of 20 or 25 minutes a side, or even with the idea of the entire recording having a thematic unity resembling the organic unity of a symphony or, say, a sonata, there was a sense of “I’m going to sit down for 20 or 30 or 45 minutes and listen to music.”

Nowadays we multitask. We’re not inclined to simply sit and listen to music for any extended period of time unless we have a long commute. So introduce the concept of the Shuffle (for brevity sake passing over the iPod). Load 300 songs onto one little device and randomize. You don’t even have to think about it. Well, beyond the initial selection of which 300 songs will you install on to the device, assuming you’re fortunate enough to have more than 25 or 30 CDs to choose from. It’s precisely this lack of thinking that is a result of our incessant multi-tasking. When anyone and everyone can post their latest “status” or write a 200 word blog entry or even publish their own novel, something is very . . . in the state of Denmark.

Don’t get me wrong. I am still a fan of the Shuffle. I use it precisely because I don’t have to think about what I want to listen to. Because I want to allow for a certain serendipity, or even in some cases, for the LORD to speak to me through a simply “seemingly random” song selection. It may be that the song that’s next in the random playlist is just the one I need to get through a difficult circumstance. But when you go from more thinking to less thinking, or even in some cases, to no thinking, I think we’re on the wrong track.