Most of the music composed in the last couple of hundred years has been built around a key or tonal center. Every note, every chord, every melody is built upon and conforms to this tonal center. Starting in the twentieth century, however, several composers have introduced atonal music. That is, music without a tonal center. For atonal music, each note and chord is unrelated tonically to any other. Our lives can sometimes feel like that atonal music - just a sequence of random occurrences without any deeper meaning or connections to any other events in our lives. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Jesus Christ can be our tonal center, the key around which we can organize our lives. Jesus Christ atoned so that we can be saved from atonality. Rather than haphazardly making our way through life with no direction or purpose, merely playing whatever jangling, discordant notes pop into our head and leaving in our wake a cacophony of chaos and discontent, we can come unto Christ, study and learn of Him, and pattern our lives after the harmonious euphony that He so perfectly embodied. As we embrace the Atonement of Christ and feel the Celestial melodies of the song of redeeming love reverberating through us, we can bring that same level of harmony into our own lives. Everything that happens to us - good or bad - does not have to be a random and disconnected and soon to be forgotten or abandoned note, but rather we can make all things work together for our good and for the Glorious music our Savior Jesus Christ is creating. Every moment we choose to center our lives in our Savior Jesus Christ and His Atonement is a moment that we abandon atonality and bind all of our notes together into one grand, unified symphony. And the most beautiful part is that thanks to the power of Jesus Christ’s Atonement, even the most out of place and discordant notes of our past can be incorporated into our Savior’s central tonality, making our music all the richer and lovelier for our mistakes and missteps. I hope that we all work a little harder to hear and feel our Savior’s Atonement so that the notes we play from day to day will build upon that great underlying theme.
