I was fortunate to learn music at school. Starting with the recorder and going on to the flute, I learned to play instruments and read music from a young age. Music theory is the practical application of turning twelve notes into an endless variety of melodies in such a way that anyone, anywhere, can then learn to play them. As a child, it seemed boring at times to learn all these technical words and what they meant, but as with reading words, once the basics are mastered, an endless world of imagination becomes accessible to all. I don’t regret learning the language of music any more than I regret learning to read. Music and reading are for me among the greatest pleasures of life.
All this is preamble to explaining that a major or minor scale has names for each note based on the position of that note to the key note (the tonic.) The beauty of doing things this way is that these names apply to any key you choose; once you know these names, you can work in any key at all. It’s a musical shorthand in the same way that learning phonic patterns can help you to read unfamiliar words.
If we give the 7 different notes in a scale numbers, 1 is the tonic, 2 is the supertonic, 3 the mediant, 4 the subdominant, 5 the dominant, 6 the submediant and 7 the subtonic (in the natural minor scale) or leading note (in the major scale.)
The tonic sandwiches the notes of the scale at both ends, rather like the bread in a sandwich holds the filling in place. It gives us both a beginning and an ending. It’s the same note at different pitches, holding all things together.
Jesus is the ‘tonic’ of the scale of life.Colossians 1:17 says that ‘he is before all things and in him all things hold together.’
Many of us try to live life randomly, plonking notes together like the child banging the notes at the piano. The resultant noise could not be called music. It sounds disconnected, discordant and jarring.
We need Christ to be the tonic to our tune, the One who holds all things together, who makes sense of the apparent randomness of life and whose melody can be heard in the everyday happenings of our lives.
In non-musical vocabulary, a tonic (other than a drink advertised widely by Schweppes which goes well with gin!) Is a medicinal substance taken to give a feeling of vigour or well-being: a stimulant or restorative, a ‘pick-me-up.’ Christ is this kind of tonic to us too. He restores our souls. (Ps 23:3) He reinvigorates us, pouring His life into us.
So let Jesus be your tonic today, holding you together, giving you the strength and vigour that you need.