Do you ever wonder why we sing? Why are we compelled to belt out a tune that is infectious or bellow from the depths of our being to a melody that haunts our soul?
Singing is merely talking with rhythm and meter….oh yea and it sounds nicer too…well at least some people sound nicer.
The quality of the sound isn’t the point. It’s the sound, the vibrations and tones that find its’ way through our soul and out of our mouths.
Every word has meaning, whether we assign it meaning or recognize its’ meaning is
another issue. (Too often we let our words, i.e. songs, become disconnected from our souls because we abuse them, we overindulge in their careless use.) But words and sounds do not exist to be pointless. It all has a point and comes from someplace inside of us.
I may even suggest that words are really a form of one person connecting to another. They leave our mouths with the hopes that someone will hear, someone will acknowledge our existence, someone will agree, someone will protest…we will at least get some form of connection good or bad. We don’t let words emerge from our mouths for nothing.
We use words and the melodies of our spirit to inform, identify, direct, encourage, correct, vent etc. We build verbal bridges…good and bad, constructive and destructive, in order to create a place where the ideas, motives and secrets of our hearts and minds can be transported somewhere else, to someone else.
Ok so that thought is getting big but let’s go back to the original question. Why do we sing?
To connect.
Love songs get us to connect with someone else whom we are fond of. Socially and politically based songs connect us to a cause we hold vigilant in our hearts. Contemplative songs connect us to the emotional and spiritual temperature of our own souls.
Worship, praise…God songs (whatever you want to call them) connect us to this idea that He is over is all and cares about it all, He created it all, knows it all and wants to hear all about whatever you need to say. But these songs do something that other genres of music do not.
They connect us to the Person of God.
Oh yes, they tend to be theologically thematic and focused on the God of the Bible. But they also help us build a bridge from our soul to God’s. And from God back to us.
When we sing these songs either when we are alone, at church or bible study, prayer group or retreat, the opportunity exists to connect to God. Sometimes our minds our fuzzy and our hearts are far, but we sing anyway. I think that is ok because God understands our weakness and yet connects back with us, even if we don’t feel it or sense it. The truths about who He is serves as the bridge He builds to connect with us.
He understands the depths of our souls even when we don’t.
Our need to sing tells a bigger story about us; one that we may or may not seek to read but there is a bigger story to us none-the-less.
The fact that we sing, even if we don’t know why, speaks to our need to connect.
A need that was set in our being long before we were born, God designed us to connect.
