The Song of the Righteous

A friend of mine likes to blog about music. Once each week, she features a song of the week that she found meaningful. Usually, it is a popular song, but she includes hymns occasionally. She always includes the lyrics, which I like. She might even like to include the music, but Blogger makes it difficult to include audio files and it is illegal. After her last post, which was about a hymn, I was thinking about how much I appreciate good music. I don't here much of it over here, and I have missed out on almost an entire year of new music. I haven't recognized any of the popular songs that my friend has written about.

I also thought that sometimes music can hide the words. This usually has the effect of making bad songs more palatable. Catchy music has hidden a lot of rubbish. The popularity of huge parts of the hip-hop genre is evidence of that. Sometimes this happens to good songs too. A tune too familiar or a hymn sung too often can become routine. We listen to it or sing it out of habit, and the notes and the words only penetrate deep enough for us to recognize something familiar. Familiarity can breed complacency.

I like my friend's song of the week. I like reading the words. When you read a song's lyrics without the music to interfere, the song becomes poetry and the hymn becomes scripture. Words have power. Try reading a hymn like "I Believe In Christ" out loud in a normal tone of voice and in a normal speaking rhythm and see if it doesn't sound like something completely new. Then try reading as if you were trying to convince someone else that they should believe in Christ too. To me it sounds a little different this way than the way it usually sounds in church. Usually there is much more meaning, because I can sing the words out of habit, but to say them requires me to think about them. I can think about the words when I sing, but I have to make a greater effort when it is a song that I know well.

"The song of the righteous is a prayer unto me...", but a prayer loses its meaning when it becomes so routine that it is formed without thought or feeling.