The Three Letters Bach Wrote on Everything

Johann Sebastian Bach composed over a thousand works in his lifetime — cantatas, fugues, concertos, masses, and humble chorales for Sunday worship. He wrote music for royal courts and for small village churches. He composed pieces so complex that musicians still marvel at them three centuries later, and melodies so simple a child could sing them.

But here is what strikes me most about Bach. At the bottom of nearly every manuscript — whether sacred or secular, whether written for a king or for a Wednesday evening service — he inscribed three letters: S.D.G. Soli Deo Gloria. "To God alone be the glory."

Bach did not see some of his work as sacred and the rest as ordinary. He made no division between the music he wrote for the cathedral and the music he wrote for the coffee house. It was all one offering. He once wrote that the aim and final end of all music should be nothing other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.

That is what purpose looks like when it saturates a life. Purpose is not reserved for our Sunday mornings or our most visible moments. The God who called you has not called you partway. Every task, every conversation, every ordinary Tuesday — S.D.G. When you know who you are living for, nothing you do is wasted. El Shaddai wastes nothing that is offered back to Him.