If you’ve ever attended a children’s choir concert chances are you’ve longed for harmony. It can be agonizing waiting and hoping for the individual notes to come together in a pleasing way. Musical teachers the world over have attempted to teach with great patience what should be a basic idea; when notes agree with each other they make a pleasing noise – harmony.

While the concept of harmony is basic, the practice can allude us – especially as it relates to living a life in harmony with others. Harmony is always difficult when you want to carry the melody – when you want to be the principal note that everyone else plays off of. If you want to play in harmony, then you have to let someone else deliver the melody. Harmony requires us to stop singing our own tune long enough to hear, adjust and come into agreement with someone else’s.

In Romans 12:15, Paul asked the Church to, “rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.” His desire was that we would be in harmony with one another – that we would come alongside each other and let other people’s lives set a tone that we match up with.

It can be hard to mourn with people; often our first reaction is to cheer them up. And rejoicing with someone isn’t easy when we’re having a bad day. But if we value harmony, then we have to submit to other people’s tune.

This isn’t to say you can’t have a bad day, go through a hard season or that people should never come alongside you. But chances are, if you practice harmony with others, there will be plenty of people to play along with you when you take your turn at the melody.

This week, keep your ears open to the tune others are playing. Let them set the melody and choose to be in harmony.