Each week we worship the Lord in word and in music, expressing words of truth on the wings of song. Music connects us to the message and helps free our spirits to worship God with greater ease and joy. I had a student express this beautifully to me a few weeks ago after we had sung an anthem about Christ’s sure faithfulness to us, and he said that somehow while he was singing the beauty of the song combined with the truth of the words moved his spirit to tears. Often a singer in the worship ministry will tell me of how a particular song impacted them as they worked on the music between our mid-week rehearsal and Sunday morning, how the truth of the message worked its way into them as they practiced and prepared.

Music is an integral part of my life and nature. I appreciate it for so many reasons… the beauty it speaks of so eloquently, the response it evokes within me, the power it has to help deliver a text, and the intense impressions it can give. I love the way it can lift my spirits or set the tone or mood for an event and how it gives us a way to express worship to our maker, creating beautiful and moving settings for words of praise, prayer, and supplication.

I remember with great clarity my first experience with the power of music to move me and fire my imagination. My father used to play beautiful music in the house on the stereo when I was a child. Often on a Saturday morning, I would dress up in one of my mother’s fancy gowns and turn on whatever record had been left on the stereo and would play to the music. That particular morning the music that came floating out the speakers was “In A Persian Market” by Ketelbey. The music was composed of several contrasting sections beginning with a beguiling serpentine melody that evoked images of snake charmers, wooden flutes, and reed baskets. The second movement sounded to me like the entire Persian army singing and it held my 6 year old imagination captive, and the third sounded as if it took place in the garden of a palace in Babylon and the peace it brought to my spirit still returns whenever I listen today. It quickly became my favorite song and I made many an imaginary trip to the hills and markets of Persia.

Music helps connect our hearts with our minds in worship and gives us a beautiful way of joining our voices together in unity and praise. Karl Pulnack, a professor at the Boston Conservatory of Music said it this way in his welcoming address to the parents of incoming Freshmen:

"The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping figure out the position of things inside us." Click here to read the complete address.

While Pulnack mistakenly attributes a savior status to music near the end of his address, he rightly acknowledges the impact that art can have on all of humanity. How blessed we are as God’s people to be gifted with the ability to create music and voices as instruments to lift in praise and understanding to our Lord and King!