Sing to The Lord!

The earliest that any of our children sang was 20 months old, and that child was Chris.  I was singing worship songs to my tired baby to calm him and hopefully rock him to sleep, but after resting very quietly on my arm for a while, he surprised me by looking up and singing the song back to me in its entirety.  Baby Chris could hardly talk, but he remembered and matched the tones in the song and formed the words as well as he could.  He sang:

“I love you Lord, and I lift my voice

To worship You, O my soul rejoice!

Take joy, my King, in what You hear

May it be a sweet, sweet sound in Your ear.”

I have no doubt that my sweet baby’s first song was a sweet sound in the ear of The Lord.  

As Chris grew, he showed interest in more complex musical techniques, teaching his little three-year-old sister a song and then making up a harmony to go with it.  Soon they were performing “Once There Was a Snowman” for the rest of the family.  After that, he began writing his own songs, like “I’m Truckin’ Up My Doggie,” which had to do with his little stuffed animal climbing up the walls of his room with his help.

Children need to sing and play.  Babies in the womb usually get a music appreciation course of some kind, hearing the types of music their parents enjoy, whether it’s classical, hard rock, mariachi, or Christian music a la’ K-LOVE.

Babies love sensory songs like Pat-a-Cake, and little children like action songs like Ring Around the Rosie, which give them an early opportunity to practice multitasking.  Lisa was stuck on Farmer in the Dell, but wanted me to provide her more siblings so we would have enough to play the game right.

As homeschoolers, we found it expedient and efficient to internalize lessons with songs. So we had songs for the phonics cards to clarify that “‘A” is for apple pie” and “‘B’ is for bed.”  Since our cards were not the same as the ABC’s in Bedtime for Frances, we were not able to use the part about “‘C’ is for crocodile combing his hair,” (which would have been fun) but had to be content with the “little cap I put upon my head.”

And all our children used the same tune to learn the spelling of their own name in song.

Various curricula we used over the years came with songs, such as the one about the names of all the states on the northern border and the names of the Books of the Bible.  There were also memory verses like “Go to the ant, thou sluggard.”  I’m pretty sure the kids who learned those songs still know the states or the books or the memory verses just as well as they remember the songs from The Sound of Music. Penny and the Magic Medallion, Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, or Godspell, if they were lucky enough to be in one of those musical productions.

Our kids did sing in the shower, which always sounds great, and those who washed and dried the dishes harmonized in the kitchen.  We sang as many rounds as we could think of in our station wagon or van on the way to church on Sunday mornings. I’ve heard that the acoustics in an empty grain silo rival that of a great cathedral, but we have never ventured out to a farm for such a heavenly musical experience.

We did have to draw the line at singing during dinner.  Singing with your mouth full is just as gross as talking with your mouth full, but it is even riskier concerning accidental aspiration.

And it wasn’t long before we had our kids in the front of the church singing for the edification of the Body of Christ.  

Chris, Robyn, Valerie, and Susie singing for an Easter service

Pastor Joe liked to hear them sing the verse (that nobody knows) to “God Bless America” or all the verses of “The Star Spangled Banner” on the Fourth of July.  Eventually, the Haley Kids were all adults who sang selections from Handel’s Messiah together from year to year.

We were recently given a book that attempts to explain why, in the view of the author, Christians should sing all of the Psalms in church.  But there are some we just don’t feel are appropriate for a worship service, especially if it is open to walk-in guests.  Those are the ones that sound like a prayer invoking God’s wrath upon His enemies.  Make no mistake:  God will pour out His wrath upon His enemies, but it’s not our job as New Testament Christians to request it; rather, it is our job to pray as Jesus prayed:

 "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do."

~Luke 23:34

But other Psalms are fine to sing, and we do that a lot at our church.  There are prayers of other kinds, songs of boasting in the Lord and recounting His goodness, songs of confession and repentance, and songs to boost your spirits when depressed.  Two weeks ago, I mentioned the Sunday School song “Jesus Loves Me.”  This is a song declaring God’s love for us personally.  It is critical to our well-being to know absolutely that we are loved, and that simple truth is the beginning of the way out of depression.

If not, all that we have left is to eat some worms and die … Just kidding.

So do you think Jesus would have said the glass was half-full or half-empty?

This passage says it all.  Jesus is neither “optimist” nor “pessimist.”

“As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.

“If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

“These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.

“This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”

~John 15:9-12

If Jesus saw a partially filled glass, He might say, “I can fix that.  Let me fill this up for you with some of My joy.”  He actually desires that fullness in us.

So when we had a friend in the hospital with Covid pneumonia, yes, she had Bible verses printed in large letters and mounted on the wall where she could see them and they were very helpful.  But then I pushed the “record” button on my smart phone and sent her a voice text of me singing, at her request.  And a second song, “The Battle Belongs to the Lord,” sweetened her stay and helped to strengthen her lungs as she sang along.  After several weeks in the hospital where it’s a constant battle just to breathe, the ability to think about God’s faithfulness to fight our battles is pleasurable.

The only time when I found it hard to sing in church was just after my mother died.  I would get too choked up to sing.  But the music going into my ears was soothing, even if I couldn’t articulate it.  And the few months of 2020 when we were ordered to stay home and watch church on TV, we made sure to sing along even in our living room.  The worship needs to come out of our mouths -- that’s the way God intended it.

So who should sing?  Only those who have a gift?  

To be sure, some of us have an extra measure of natural ability, but the Bible says that we should both:

“Sing to Him a new song; Play skillfully with a shout of joy.”

~Psalm 33:3

And:

“Make a joyful shout to the LORD, all you lands!” 

~Psalm 100:1

Skillful music is good, but joyful music is good too, even if you don’t think you can sing.  The King James Version says, “Make a joyful noise … “  Can you make noise?  Can it be joyful?  

It looks like I’m going to be giving a friend some voice lessons soon.  She said she thought she would like to learn how not to offend the Lord’s ear so much.  But how could we offend the Lord?  We are His children, and just as I loved to hear Chris’s first baby worship song, even if he didn’t understand what the words meant, our Lord delights in the songs of His children.  

Sing to Him with all your heart, and keep those vocal cords exercised.  We’ll need to use them in Heaven!