Proclaimer Blog
We’re wired as musicians
Music is powerful. Perhaps that’s why it causes such differences as it sometimes does amongst Christians. But despite the negative publicity, we are to think positively about the power of song in the life of the church and the Christian. I’ve thought a lot about this last week. As regular readers know, my precious mother-in-law has just died. Her death was not particularly a surprise, but nevertheless death still stings. Badly. As Mrs R and I have driven back and forth this week we’ve kept returning to Sojourn Music’s Water and the Blood album (Isaac Watts hymns to Bluegrass – I know, not everyone’s cup of tea), and we keep returning to this particular song :
Absent from flesh, O blissful thought
What joy this moment brings
Freed from the blame my sin has brought,
From pain and death and its sting.
Absent from flesh, O Glorious day!
In one triumphant stroke
My reckoning paid, my charges dropped
and the bonds ’round my hands are broke.
I go where God and glory shine,
To one eternal day
This failing body I now resign,
For the angels point my way.
Absent from flesh! then rise, my soul,
Where feet nor wings could climb,
Beyond the sky, where planets roll,
And beyond all keep of time.
God has given us songs. Joyful songs help us express thankfulness in ways that cannot be matched with words alone. Mournful songs like this can help us express a confidence in sadness which even the most poetic words cannot sustain.
He has made everyone of us a musician. Thank God.