EDITORIAL
Everybody knows that singing lifts your mood. It’s true isn’t it, you can’t be grumpy while you’re singing. Medics are realising that singing has wide-ranging mental and physical benefits—for example it improves lung function, reduces stress, releases beneficial hormones into the body, improves blood pressure, boosts the immune system, and even reduces the severity of chronic pain. Singing in a group is a powerful social bonding mechanism. Some doctors prescribe joining a choir as a medical treatment.
The Bible abounds with songs, as you’d expect.
In the Old Testament
When God brought Israel out of their slavery in Egypt and destroyed the pursuing Egyptian army, their leader Moses led them in song: ‘I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him’ (Exodus 15:1–2). Moses’ sister Miriam led the women in dance and song with the same refrain (vs. 20–21).
They arrived at the border of the Promised Land, and the time came for Moses to die. He called the people together, and taught them a song which is recorded in Deuteronomy 32. The song is about the greatness of God and His goodness to His people, their own persistent lack of faith in Him, and a warning that they must mend their ways. The whole of the book of Deuteronomy concerns the Law which Moses taught to the people, but this song brings the nation’s relationship with their God into sharp focus, and it’s set to music.
Singing engages the attention, and makes the words memorable, and also emphasizes the emotion in the text.
There are songs throughout the Old Testament, but they’re most concentrated in the book of Psalms. (A ‘psalm’ is a sacred song.) There are 150 Psalms, written at various times in Israel’s history by various people. Many were written by King David, who is called the ‘sweet psalmist of Israel’ (2 Samuel 23:1). Some of them have a particular historical context, and some of them were used at particular times, perhaps during different services and festivals. There are sometimes hints of this in their content, and in their titles. For example Psalm 56: ‘To the choirmaster: according to The Dove on Far-off Terebinths. A Miktam of David, when the Philistines seized him in Gath.’
The Psalms are more than songs for public worship. There are Psalms for every human situation: for instance, joy (Psalm 100), distress
(Psalm 6), and penitence (Psalm 51); for praising God (Psalm 33), and pleading for help (Psalm 22). It’s a great thing to have a Psalm (or just a snatch of a Psalm) committed to memory, and to be able to call it to mind when the need arises.
In the New Testament
In the time of Christ, the Old Testament songs were a part of life. Jews would be familiar with the Temple services in which the Psalms were sung by choirs. Jesus and his disciples sang a hymn (probably a Psalm) at the end of their last supper before they made their way to Gethsemane where he was arrested (Mark 14:26). There’s the inspiring account of Paul and Silas, when they’d been beaten and abused and thrown into prison in Philippi: ‘About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them’ (Acts 16:25).
Songs were a part of the life of the First Century church. Ephesians 5:14 is probably a phrase from an early hymn: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’ The Apostle Paul exhorts his readers: ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God’ (Colossians 3:16).
A believer’s life is enriched when singing is a regular part of it. There is an abun-dance of hymns and spiritual songs in most languages. (They vary in quality, of course—songs are of value if they’re in tune with the Bible’s teaching, and not if they’re not.) And most, although not all believers have the ability to worship and sing with others.
Joining with your brothers and sisters to lift off the roof in praise with a well-loved anthem; or with a group around a fire, or on your own on the road or in the bath—singing ‘with thankfulness in your heart to God’ is a wonderful thing to do. In addition to all the physical and mental benefits, it brings you closer to your Creator.
Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting (Psalm 147:1).