[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 22/Feb/2015]
I will praise the Lord all my days, make music to my God while I live. (Psalm 146:2 Grail Translation)
During the inspiring service a couple of weeks ago when we focused on the wonderful happenings at Link Club and Praise Club, Jon Norman expressed how uplifting he found our singing that morning. I’m glad he said that because I too could feel the depth of the worship that we were giving to our Lord and Saviour, and I am sure you could too. Also last week with Russell’s son-in-law the music worship lifted our hearts to praise God. Music certainly has a great effect on how we feel and express ourselves
A few weeks ago at our Thursday Morning Group instead of our usual Bible study we had what we called “A Musical Interlude”. Dennis Hickman visited us to play a number of songs, from “Someone to Watch Over Me” and “Body and Soul” to “Summertime” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, all played in his inimitable jazz style. In between the music we looked at a few of the many references in the Bible about music – including celebratory music and dancing in the community, praising God with music and singing, the healing qualities of music, the descriptions of musical instruments and even of King David using a full orchestra and chorus to praise God for the safe arrival of the Ark of the Covenant in Jerusalem.
As I prepared for that, I was reminded of a time that I visited a church where they set aside a few days when you could go quietly to the church to spend time praying. Various areas were set up to suggest different ways to pray to God, similar to what we did in our old church and will hopefully start again in our new church. There was one area in the church where they had prepared bookmarks with different Bible verses on them. The idea was that you found a verse that spoke to you and after meditation prayed about what it said. This is the verse on the bookmark which I chose for myself.
The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. (Zeph. 3:17 ESV)
As I thought about what it said to me I was able to reaffirm my faith that God had saved me through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and those words also spoke to me again of His gracious love for me. But I had never thought of God rejoicing over me with gladness, or especially of Him expressing His rejoicing by singing to me, and therefore to each one of us too. I had always thought of us singing to God in praise and gratitude to Him, but I had not noticed before His promise that there will be a time when God Himself will sing to us of all that we mean to Him. When that day comes, to hear God singing to us will surely be the most beautiful and uplifting music we will ever hear.
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Contributed by Michael Goble; © the Author
