To God and to Renaissance Composers: I Thank You

My co-workers and I are working on a huge indexing project for a collection of music scores. During my seven hour shift tonight, I made a goal: fill up a cart with music scores and index them all. It was an ambitious goal for me, as I filled a book cart with thirty-five books of music scores.

I then set to work typing the contents of each book onto a computer. All of the books features music from the Renaissance period, some secular and some sacred. I thought about a few things as I was engaged in a task that didn't require much thinking. I thought about the composers of these songs, their devotion to God and their faith (for the sacred songs) and their talent in their musical art (for the secular). I realized I was grateful for the people who wrote these songs and those who preserved them. Their work then, centuries ago, provided something for me to do in my work today.

I also realized that I was typing with much greater speed and accuracy than I ever thought possible for me. I was hardly looking at the keyboard, mostly at the books' table of contents. In my daily prayers, I have often included a request that I would have help as I work hard and strive to do my best at my job. Today, I witnessed that. Today God helped me, allowed me to have the focus and the drive to finish indexing all thirty-five books with ten minutes to spare in my shift! This was just enough time to sit back for a minute (with a sigh of victorious relief) and put the scores back on the bookshelves.

So today, I am grateful for the people who provided 500-year old music for me to work with, and I am grateful for God's help in making great progress in a huge library project.