Memory Monday: Singing Hymns

My mother and one of her daughters (not sure which one)

SINGING HYMNS

I’ve always loved to sing hymns. My mother used to run her index finger under the words in the song book when I was little. I remember thinking as I bent my head over the songbook that I needed to learn to read so I could read the words for myself when I sang.

Funny how we grow up and do the same things we did as a child. For years, I kept my head bent over the song book and reading the words as I sang, even though I knew the words. I’d sing the wonderful familiar words and feel good inside, which in turn made me smile. Although I have to admit that all too often, the words to those songs were simply that—just words, because my mind and heart were on other things—what to fix for dinner, some irritation I hadn’t let go, what I needed to do tomorrow.

Then several years ago, I had a problem with my vision (OK, to be honest, I needed bi-focals and hadn’t gotten them). During this time, I couldn’t read the words in the song book. But you know, the funny thing about that was that I knew the words for all those songs anyway—I had sung them for years, so I didn’t keep by head bowed. Later, we got the big screens in the auditorium, so I didn’t have to look down to learn the new songs since they were in front of me.

Sometime after that, the thought of the Throne Room of God settled into my mind, and everything changed. As I was already looking upward (to see the screen in the front of the church auditorium) while we sang, I’d close my eyes and envision myself in the Throne Room of God, standing before the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in all Their glory, all Their majesty, all Their power with Their love flowing down from Them to me. A love, living and active, long before I was born. A love that took the Son from all this glory and majesty and brought Him to a stable that led to the cross. Around Them were the Heavenly host, singing and praising.

And as the congregation around me sang, I sang to God.

The worship service changed for me then. How can it not, when you stand before God, the Creator of the universe, the lover of my soul, while singing words like these, “I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene, and wonder how He could love me, a sinner condemned unclean. How marvelous, how wonderful, and my song shall always be, how marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior’s love for me.” How can I even think about what I’m fixing for Sunday dinner when I’m in that throne room singing “I know not why God’s wondrous love He to me He has made know, nor why unworthy Christ in love redeemed me for His own. But I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I committed unto Him against that day?”

One of the other things I learned through all this was the joy of not only singing to God, but to others. When your eyes are looking down at the words of a songbook or forward to the words on a giant screen, you miss looking at those around you when you sing songs of encouragement, like A Common Love, They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love and Blest Be the Tie.

Yes, I love to sing. I love the joy, the introspection, the humility and the fellowship it brings into my life.

Thank You, God, for the gift of song and allowing us to sing to You and to those around us.