Violin Masterclass with Dr. Maurice Sklar

Hee hee...this is long overdue. Attended the masterclass last Saturday. My church had invited a worship violinist, who's a Messianic Jew, to play at our Sanctification Weekend services, so in between, they organised a masterclass session with him. (It was also the church's bid to recruit a string ensemble...not that I'm ready to join now lah).

Well, I had stopped playing the violin for more than 10 years and had stopped at Grade 3 (used to be in my primary school's string ensemble). I had for some time thought if I should pick up the violin again, especially for worship purpose...ok, it's not really a "should", but have been procrastinating.

Good thing I discovered that my ear was still sensitive to the sounds of the violin and was a little inspired to start practising my violin again. However, what was really enriching was Dr. Sklar's sharing during the session. He's a very humorous person (haha...he joked about his name that if he was at a restaurant and wanted more rice, it was like calling his name. "Mau-rice" vs "more rice").

He talked a bit about how the musical instruments evolved even from the time of David & its relation to worship. Also, he gave some examples of instruments that have already reached perfection and you can't really make anything better in this age (a some were already perfected centuries ago), e.g. the violin, the oboe, the timpani, etc. Also, the violin is regarded as an acoustically perfect musical instrument.

What really stayed in my mind was when he mentioned about the old & new tabernacle worship. In the Old Testament days during the old covenant with GOD, only Levites were authorised to perform the necessary in the courts, so people would need to go through the Levites (priests) and were not really permitted to enter His presence unless authorised or else he/she would be put to death.
However, we are now in the covenant of grace, which is the foundational truth we believe in, that Jesus died for us and redeemed us. So we have been given the authority to enter into GOD's presence directly. Hence, we do not need to go through priests, etc. to commune with GOD.

(It's sometimes amazing how things that you think you know sort of get "revealed" to you in a deeper way.)

And indeed, he mentioned something that I firmly believe in - that when in heaven, all we will be doing will be to worship GOD... can you just imagine the sight, the sound. It's (forgive the pun) heavenly.