I think God likes our music.
Let me explain
We need to establish a baseline of known established facts about God first to discuss God liking our music. We will start with his name, God or Yahweh by the Hebrews. It was actually too holy to be spoken back thousands of years ago. I think today, God likes it when we scream his name! So, it’s pretty easy to see why music might be mishandled or taken for more or less than what it is. I remember growing up in the sixties and listening to that ‘rock and roll’ music which went against most of the Greatest Generation’s taste buds. There was angst about revolution, disarray, lack of modesty, lack of humility, and it was memorialized with Woodstock. See? There, right there is what is wrong with this country! Does it sound, well, familiar today?
…grilled cheese sandwich.
But somehow and for some reason, God let it happen. The all knowing, all powerful, creator of the universe, the keeper of our hearts—if we allowed it, the author of sacrificial love, allowed lyrics in those days which seem tame today. God likes our music, most of it anyway. Nothing quite as memorable as do your grandma like a grilled cheese sandwich. Which, upon first reading, kind of demands some kind of explanation.
There is still a line in Earth, Wind, and Fire’s song September no one really knows what they’re saying and when we get to that line, usually driving cross country which is a perfect time to dial it up, we just mouth something close, like Badi-a, sudden you remember, badi-a , dangin’ in September, badi-a never was a-d-ah-a.’ The song changes every time I hear it and try singing to it while I’m tapping on the steering wheel. It competes with Rascal Flat’s song Life is a Highway to inspire creativity. It came on one time in the car when the whole family and I were traveling. I got into the zone in my mind, and someone asked me a question and I gently said, “not now, I’m flying a plane.”
He loves it when we car dance, as long as we keep our mitts at 10 and 2 and our head on a swivel for traffic-maybe our windows up so we don’t disturb the guy in the Range Rover next to us NOT car dancing. He loves to watch us be joyful. Jesus loves it when the music causes us to feel emotional and allows us to feel our feelings we stuff into the preverbal laundry chute.
Songs like….
Songs like Etta James At Last, allowing you to imagine dancing with a love, on the beach, at night, barefoot, slowly planting and swaying. Imagining getting your nice linen pants wet because they weren’t rolled up high enough.
Dave Matthews Crash, bringing out romance. Helen Jane Long, who is playing now as I write, having yet to find a song of hers that is bad—or even mediocre, writing music to get you through the death of a terminal patient, soft and soothing as you lay in the bathtub buried under hot water because you want the mind to stop doing what if?
…for times of kindness and love.
Parajet’s guitar with a sound I haven’t heard and a calming I rarely feel along with David Tolk’s soft and slow piano. And of course Making Plans from the Braveheart soundtrack for those moments when you’re down to your last couple of metaphorically described rounds and dawn of a miserable outcome is starting to show on the horizon. You and a few others of your kind are sitting around the campfire, sharpening sticks because that is all you have, allowing you to remember a few lines from Shakespeare’s Henry V to bring you a strong heart— for that sharpened stick event- Who’s he that wishes so….?
One of those times I wrote about before while driving and so joyful in the middle of a dumpster fire, because I could feel Him in the truck, I said outloud ‘you pick the song you like.’ Then pushing shuffle on my music and as quick as I pushed it, the William Tell Overture popped up. I started to laugh, realizing my Lord of the Universe, liked the Rossini classics. But then I said ‘pick another’ as it ended and the Brothers Osborn, Nobody’s Nonbody was next. Apparently, God likes the classics and Country.
God loves us….
God loves us singing his name. Loves it! Growing up, going to church, there were no jazz bands or worship bands. He uses music to lift us. My parents, that Greatest Generation group, loved the 23rd Psalm and Onward Christian Soldiers. The song worked then. And for many many people, it still does. But music to motivate the heart, sooth the heart, encourage the heart, to do or say or be what the spirit in us wants us to be, is a beautiful thing. And that only comes from God. He can use that dumpster fire I mentioned to be our finest hour.
God brings joy, encouragement, courage, empathy, mercy, caring, concern, love. He uses what we have made and uses it to encourage us and to fill in those areas where they are needed. Long’s instrumental Through the Dark was even named to do what it did for me. Songs, hewn by God, absolutely can sing to our hearts and we, in turn, can sing to God, maybe in a different way than our parents did, but He knows what we mean. Like I said, God likes our music.
Other than the …grilled cheese sandwich thing. He has no idea about that one.
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