The Cathedral Organ Restored

In 2014, the pipe organ at Notre-Dame de Laon in northern France sat silent. Centuries of dust, neglect, and amateur repairs had choked its 3,000 pipes. Some had been plugged with newspaper. Others were bent or corroded beyond recognition. A team of master craftsmen from a Parisian workshop spent three painstaking years dismantling every pipe, cleaning each one by hand, and restoring the wind chests that gave the instrument its breath.

When the organ finally sang again, the congregation wept. Not because it was new, but because it was finally being used for what it was made to do.

Paul writes to the Corinthians with that same urgency. "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?" he asks, almost incredulous that they had forgotten. The believers in Corinth treated their bodies like that neglected organ — stuffed with whatever was convenient, bent toward whatever felt good in the moment. "Everything is permissible for me," they kept saying. Paul does not argue about permissions. He argues about purpose.

Your body is not a storage locker for passing pleasures. It is an instrument crafted by the Almighty, purchased at an extraordinary price, and designed to resonate with the presence of the living God. Every choice you make with your body either tunes that instrument or chokes its pipes.

"Honor God with your bodies," Paul pleads. Let the music play as it was always meant to.