Today’s scripture: Psalm 98 (NRSV) (The Message) (KJV) What might God be saying to me?
My thoughts (John Seksay):
“O sing to the Lord a new song, for [the Lord] has done marvelous things!”
As do most of us nowadays, I have an iPod with playlists of music that I enjoy hearing. I most commonly use it at the gym, where I don’t really care for much of the background music. Some songs I listen to occasionally, and a few I listen to quite often. When I think of the vast selection of musical styles, traditions, and artists brought to the entire world by the Internet, I am amazed to hear of any particular song becoming a new hit or a new “classic” for all times. What could anyone sing about that hasn’t already been sung several different ways elsewhere? What’s left in this wide world to make a song new and unique?
Recently, my wonderful spouse, Greg, pulled up a semi-historical movie about a woman from a prestigious university who suffered from job discrimination in the Music Department. Her unique ideas and passionate interests in traditional Old World folk music were only to be expressed as an assistant to some male professor whose tenure and position would give them credibility. Her work with the records of old written music was not to be hers alone. The credit and any promotions to be had were for the official experts — men. So, at the very beginning of the 1900s, this brave soul left the university and set out in search of some way to do something by herself to prove her capability. Amazingly, she realized that many of the old songs that only existed on paper in Europe’s libraries were still being widely sung among the isolated hill folk of Appalachia in the United States. Here these “dead” songs were still alive and vibrant, full of subtlety and flavor that ink can’t capture on paper. She had to work hard to win the trust of these people and convince them to sing for her. On her own initiative, she had early recording equipment dragged into the roadless hill country of Appalachia to capture this beautiful music only heard among the locals for generations! Her pioneering work led to the revival of this supposedly dead music to the larger world.
From this movie, I understood how an old song could be new, regardless of how often it is sung. Every person who sings it pours their own hope, their own fear, their own experiences into the singing. That is why choirs are so majestic; they are a blending of so many voices, each with its own flavor for the piece being presented. But even a song sung quietly to ourselves as we go through the day has an ethereal audience.
So, if you feel that you can’t sing to God anything he hasn’t heard before, remember this: God may have heard the theme many times before, but he hasn’t heard your version yet. What makes the song new is what you pour into it from your own unique self. Without you, there is a distinct gap that God does hear, in the choir of life.
Thought for the day: No matter how humble or quiet the tune, God can hear my unique voice amid the tumult of the world — if I will only sing! Let my appreciation for all of God’s blessings flow forth in a harmony of thoughts, words, and deeds!
We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.