Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

A recent BBC podcast told an incredible story about a young pianist who found God through her music,

though she now goes by her baptismal name of Eleanor, Yuri Wang, grew up in communist China.

The stringently atheistic education

she received there emphasized the importance of hard work, and that reality only consisted of the

physical world. She learned technique, not about transcendent concepts like beauty, much less the

god behind beauty. It was on an educational trip to Italy that Eleanor encountered the beauty

of Christian

architecture and also the worshipful attitude of people at prayer. Most of all, she was moved by the

beauty of Gloria, by composer Antonio Vivaldi. She was confronted in the musical work with phrases

like Lamb of God and Son of the Father. According to the BBC article, Eleanor wanted to know more.

What did these words mean? Why had composers been inspired by them for centuries? In answering her

questions, a local priest pointed her to the Christian faith. In a profound realization,

especially for an artist, Alinor concluded that the simplistic narrative of her upbringing

could not explain the beauty that she had encountered in the world.

When asked why people are touched by the presence of God in music, she had this to say,

because in music you no longer feel the passage of time or space.

Often the moment when you're moved by beauty is a symbol of eternity.

Many people were touched by this

feeling because it's a kind of beauty that no language or image can fully describe, end quote.

And it was in part the ugliness of the worldview in which Eleanor was raised that helps

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