The World Needs Our Songs

 

As Spring cleaning continues in the neighborhood, all manner of interesting things make their way to the curb to be picked up by the city. There are countless trash bags of who knows what, and boxes filled with the same. Then there are the individual items that always seem to spark my memories and imagination.

This turntable made me smile. My big brother and I had a small phonograph on which we played our little 45 rpm records. In our living room we had a stereo on which we enjoyed playing everything from classical piano recordings by Liberace to an album that demonstrated the marvel of stereophonic recording through various and random sounds. As we got older, we would spend our allowance on records that we heard and loved on the radio.

I spent much of my life loving music. I began singing in a choir when I was 3 or 4 years old, and I have sung in a choir to this day. I often mark time in my life by the music of my life. Each of our lives has its own soundtrack. Music marks our childhood, our youth and the various stages of our adulthood. A song can transport us to a certain place and a certain time in our journey in powerful ways. This is true for me in my spiritual journey as well. Songs and hymns remind me of faces and places with amazing clarity of detail.

The Psalmist writes, “He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.” We are not all skilled on an instrument or blessed with a great voice, but each of us has our own unique song to sing. We sing our song into the world through our words of encouragement. We sing our song into the world through our acts of service. We sing our song into the world through kindness, compassion and acceptance. The world needs to hear such songs. And we need to sing them.

Peace.