By Rebecca Gitta

I have been privileged to enjoy both teaching music to children, alongside a performing career, both of which I don’t take for granted. 

How did I get into music? Well, if by that you mean “stumbling or resigning into music,” I didn’t just “get into music,” and certainly, nothing has been able to quench my love for it so far.

I am convinced that God knows exactly what He is doing when He creates us with these artistic desires, and in His sovereignty and providence, He subdues even our sometimes frowning responses. 

As a music instructor, God has given me responsibility to guide my students in appreciating, enjoying, and sharing their God-given musicality.

This responsibility often goes beyond carefully writing my lesson plans to preparing to offer my students a holistic experience; it moves from only delivering subject content to making sure that end-of-year production exceeds expectations.

Teaching music provides opportunities to encourage, as you often wrap your arm around a frustrated student who’s struggling over a piano piece.

It is an opportunity to comfort a child who randomly whispers in your ear what’s really bothering them, and it’s an opportunity to become their key confidante, ultimately pointing them to Christ, whose strength is made perfect in our weakness. It is my opportunity as a teacher too to practice the fruits of the Holy Spirit, like kindness, patience, faithfulness, and self-control, to mention but a few.

I can indeed testify that God has, and is still, using the numerous music field opportunities to mold me for His purposes and my sanctification.

I have been charged to work unto the Lord; hence, do the best I can to provide quality experiences in both my music classes and when I am performing on stage. It’s not easy; sometimes things fall apart, but this is one of the texts that has become an earworm, together with Romans 8:28, that keeps me grounded and takes me through the hardest and most challenging seasons inevitable to my calling and work. 

Hey, and don’t get me started on neuroscience and music—all the action that goes on in the brain when we listen to and make music—I didn’t know much about the necessity of music to created beings like us—but thanks to devoted neuroscientists like Daniel Levitin, whose insights instead left me marveling at God’s magnificence as creator.

I am glad that even discoveries about how music relates to our brains point to the one who made us this way and invites us to draw near to him. 

What a reminder that we are all created by a perfect Father who knew exactly what he was doing with every intricate detail, even in knitting our neurons.

Glory be to Him indeed! And whereas every child may not become a maestro or superstar, which is perfectly fine. God has graciously given us the gift of music to savor, alongside a lifestyle that honors him through Christ. 

The writer is a music teacher and singer at Gitta Arts; she has also featured in the ongoing Faith and Work Muyenga Cohort here