Why Sing? | Page 7 of 11

See all the potential for songwriters?  So much doctrine, so little time.  Doctrine is what is believed, taught and confessed.  Hymns and creeds take that thought and condense it, codify it, organize it, and systemize it, making dogma accessible, and in the case of song, marrying thought with melody to intensify the impact.   (Pelikan vol. 1, page 2)

Our songs pale when compared to the praise of heaven, don’t they?  Jonathan Edwards tries to console us with this thought, that in heaven our hearts will be enlarged, and we will be able to praise him “in an immensely more perfect and exalted manner than we can do in this world. You will not be troubled with such a dead, dull heart, with so much coldness, so many clogs and burdens from corruption, and from a earthly mind; with a wandering, unsteady heart; with so much darkness and so much hypocrisy. You shall be one of that vast assembly that praise God so fervently, that their voice is “as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings.”  (Praise – The Chief Employment of Heaven)
 
But even if singing is a faint echo, Christian song still has the power to move the hardest heart – ours, or at the same time someone else who might be listening in. Christian song has a drawing power all its own, a ‘heavenly scent’ that innocently entices the listener to let down their guard, if only for a moment.  That moment might be all it takes.  Kidd in his book recounts how Anne Lamott the author…

Anne Lamott writes and speaks about subjects that begin with capital letters: Alcoholism, Motherhood, Jesus.  But armed with self-effacing humor – she is laugh out-loud funny – and ruthless honesty, Lamott converts her subjects into enchantment.

Actually, she writes about what most of us don’t like to think about.  She wrote her first novel for her father, the writer Kenneth Lamott, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer.  She has said that the book was “a present to someone I loved who was going to die.”

In all her novels, Anne Lamott writes about loss – loss of loved ones and loss of personal control.  She doesn’t try to sugar-coat the sadness, frustration and disappointment, but tells her stories with honesty, compassion and a pureness of voice.  Anne Lamott says, “I have a lot of hope and a lot of faith and I struggle to communicate that.”

…Anne Lamott heard some gospel music drifting out into the street from a dilapidated building across the street, and she wandered over to take a look.  Joining in what she called the ‘glorious noise,’ she says of that encounter:
Something inside of me that was stiff and rotting would feel soft and tender.  Somehow the singing wore down all the boundaries and distinctions that kept me so isolated.  Sitting there, standing with them to sing, sometimes so shaky and sick that I felt like I might tip over, I felt bigger than myself, like I was being taken care of, tricked into coming back to life.  (p. 25)

God makes us his children in a variety of ways, and can employ song to accomplish that end. Caedmon, who lived and died sometime in the 6th Century A.D., had a unique encounter with God that turned him into a worshipper.

Caring for the animals at a monastery, he lived with the non-religious, and they routinely ate together in the hall at a table, entertaining each other by singing with a hand-held harp that they would pass around. These were hardly songs of faith. Caedmon was no singer, and before the harp was passed to him, he would sneak off to the stable to care for the livestock.

One such evening, as night-watchman of the animals, he had a dream. In it a man called him by name and told him to sing.  Caedmon explained that he couldn’t get up the nerve to sing with the others, so the man asked him to sing to him instead.

Caedmon said that he did not know what to sing about, and the man said, "sing about the Creation of all things." So in his dream,  Caedmon saw himself singing with text that he had never heard before. And when he awoke, this became his first song.

        Now let me praise the keeper of Heaven’s kingdom,
            The might of the Creator, and his thought,
        And all His works, as He, eternal Lord,
            Father of glory, started every wonder.
        First he created heaven as a roof for the sons of men.
            Then the eternal Keeper of mankind
        Furnished the earth below, the land for men,
            Almighty God and everlasting Lord