| Ephesians 5:19 – “”Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.” |
What do you experience when you sing?
That may be a strange and difficult question to answer.
One reason is we are so familiar with singing, especially in worship services, we seldom take notice.
But another is that we find it hard to describe.
That was my perspective until I saw it done.
As a boy, I grew up in Santa Fe, NM, pre-weirdness.
One of the features of the New Mexican capitol city lies just north of town. A bowl was created out of the foothills which became a world-famous arena that housed the Santa Fe Opera. Since it was outside, the opera was a summer activity.
Each summer, opera singers would come to Santa Fe. Our next-door neighbor rented her house to some while she left town. So, I got used to opera singing early.
But what got my attention was a Sunday at church.
We had moved away but returned for a visit about a year later.
It was a familiar place with familiar feeling. Except this Sunday something was different.
After the service started, a woman came into the service and sat down. That’s when that service changed.
At the next song, you heard this beautiful voice singing something so familiar we did not need a book. But there was something different.
It wasn’t the crystal clarity of a trained vocal instrument.
It was how she sang. She sang with emotion.
I realize she is a performer, but the question was who was the audience? And I also realized that she believed she was not singing for the church but for the Lord of the church.
And it hit me, perhaps for the first time, as a 13-year-old that songs sung with meaning were done because they realized God was listening. And when you realize that it changes the experience.
For all the discussion about the method of singing, I think an issue just as weighty is something that peeks through Paul’s one-verse instruction about singing.
“Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart,” (Ephesians 5:19)
We may sing together, but we better be making the melody with our heart, not our voices. For the melody of the heart is purer and finer than the most polished soprano. And it is tuned to the heart of God.
Seldom do I sing when I don’t think of how that opera singer affected me. Remember, when you sing, lead with your heart.
–Robert G. Taylor
robertgtaylor.com
