Praising God

My Song

/ pastorpete51 / Leave a comment

The Lord is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation Psalm 118:14 NKJV

What I miss most about childhood is baseball.  I loved the summer memories of trying to catch, pitch and the challenge trying to hit the ball. Only once can I remember hitting a home run and it happened while wildly swinging with both eyes closed!

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But this story isn’t about baseball; it’s about music and while the thing I loved most was baseball, the thing I loved least was daily music lessons. I hated not being able to play with my friends till my clarinet lessons were done. I hated sitting trying to remember that every good boy does fine (EGBDF). I hated split and bleeding lips from the clarinet reed. I dreaded sitting Saturday mornings with my music teacher squeaking and squawking through my lesson. But gradually music grew to be less like an unwelcome intruder and more like a family member. Clarinet blended into piano and then guitar. One summer I learned to sing and then music which had always been a part of my life became my song.

 

It is the same way in our relationship with the Lord. Every day we squeak and squawk through the notes to His song. Sometimes it seems like it would be fun to just run off to do our own thing. But if we commit to Him a little every day we will find that slowly we are being changed. Little by little, note by note He begins to teach us the musical score which He has created just for our life. Learning that melody by heart changes His music into our daily strength and song.

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Connection by Hymn

/ pastorpete51 / 2 Comments

He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” Luke 20:38

Hymns are songs that make a connection. Hymns can be sung by grandchildren as they hold  their Grandparent’s hands. I am connected to my father who is in now heaven when I hear the words  “When peace like a river attendeth my way.” I can still hear the voice of my pastor who has flown to heaven, when I sing “I’ll fly away O glory!” We who claim orthodoxy of the faith sometimes think and act like the Sadducees  who didn’t believe in life after death. We sing and worship as if Martin Luther, Charles Wesley and Fanny Crosby were all long dead. But the reality is that they are also praising God together with us in “Real time” as we say today. When we sing the hymns we have access to a connection of praise that runs back through the ages without the divide of denomination, geography or race.

The demand for continual new material in our cooperate worship has become so strong that even songs written 10 years ago are treated like second class citizens. Worship songs from the 1970’s – 80’s are considered so out of touch or quaint that no one even considers using them.  But focusing only on latest contemporary worship rather than keeping us wonderfully connected to God actually leaves us both isolated and impoverished. We are not the only generation that has ever known how to glorify God but rather  we are simply one row in God’s enormous heavenly arena. When we worship we need to close our eyes and imagine the voices of all believers down through the centuries blending

aniversario da igreja 002their ancient harmonies with our 21st century praise. He is not the God of the dead but of the living and He gives us worship songs ever new and yet ageless; as His gift of connection to that ageless connected community called the church!