The Reason We Sing

Psalm 96:1 O sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all the earth.

I've been in the habit of reading one verse of Psalms. Very often it is the common cry of the Psalmist, something like: "Hear me in my distress, O Lord." I can connect with this. I cry out to God often and the verses give voice to my prayers.

But I have noticed there is another emphasis. Balancing the cries for help are these frequent calls to sing, to be joyful, to give praise. I've tried to understand praise. The endeavor is embarrassing, like asking someone why they are so joyful. Must there always be analysis? Do we have to know? Why not just be? I give up the question, and find myself in something like worship. When we know we've reached the end of ourselves and there is only God, we kneel -- or we die the death of a thousand downward steppes.

It is ok, I hope, to try to understand. Praise suggests something about value. We praise that which we find deeply worthy. "Great job" is praise, as is the welling admiration we have for intrinsic beauty of all kinds: well-built homes, fine music, skillful play, clever dealing. The heart knows what is good and responds with praise, giving something like worship to the gifts which reflect the great Giver of all.

Praise is necessary, for it shapes our life like nothing else. At times it is a sheer discipline: we must recognize and acknowledge the good even when our lesser self wishes to look away. Budding envy takes us to these lesser ways, as does weariness, self-absorption, the innate fallenness of the human soul pressing through relentlessly.

But we can -- we must -- win the day, the moment, the life by giving song where it is right. This is liturgy, really, the 3-times-a-week singing I grew up with at country churches. We sang to God and about God. We reminded ourselves and shaped our life with singing. "Love lifted me" lauded the "amazing grace" of a God whose work for the world allowed us to sing "redeemed, how I love to proclaim it."

These somewhat lesser liturgies gave way to majestic assertions. "A mighty fortress is our God" expressed a faith that faces and overcomes the greatest obstacle. And Wesley's grand pen admonished, "Arise, my soul, arise, shake off thy guilty fears!" There was cause to sing and singing confirmed it in our soul and life, every song another layer of love and truth, habit and life-change.

Singing can be an end in itself, and there are another thousand things to say, I suppose, in the journey of understanding. Singing must have cause, that which engenders. Otherwise it is noise and pestilence, nihilism distilled. One could even say the worthiness of the cause tells us whether singing is good or deadly, a croak of death singing praises that excite the sense while starving the soul and leading to the pit.

Psalms give us the cause: God. Worship is the only sane response to God and praise in song is the highest form of that worship. It tells us what matters when we think nothing does. It carries us forward in the bleakest of days. Often quiet, it is the necessary habit of the soul for all who dare to believe there is a God who is good, and who makes Himself known to us everywhere in the awe-some gift of life.

"Sing to the Lord a new song." In the weariness of the daily grind it sounds wrong, but it is me that is wrong. And so I hear the exhortation, give thanks for its life-giving truth, and sing, glad that no one can hear me except God. This is all the better because it is only for Him, a happy gratitude for all the joys that color all the days and trials. Truly, He is the reason we sing.