Speaking in the Light — Sing Your Song!

Celebrate this heartbeat because it just might be your last one. I know life is hard. And I know that this is true from my own up close and personal experience. If you are waiting for all of life to perfectly fall into place before you will ever give your soul permission to throw a party, you might never well know the joy of allowing your spirit the chance to dance. I have probably felt more pain than I ever have known pleasure along this beaten path. But I do know that if a person loses his voice to express the unique song that the Creator of all wired deep down within his being- then he loses the greatest weapon formed to equip him to be able to shatter the darkness. To sing is to shout to the surrounding audience, “I may be down- but I’m not out!” It is a sign to the opposition that this walk has not concluded in defeat- for I will press on to go the distance.
Now I want to make it very clear that we don’t sing because we are blindly oblivious to all that encompasses us. It is not a song of escape to pretend that what is real is not happening! It is not a self-induced comatose state to attempt to deceive our brain that all is joy and dandy. Actually we sing a song of thanks not for the circumstances which change with every passing minute! But we raise our melodies of hope to communicate authentic thanks to our Maker that God has not abandoned us and he is with us- even in the mess! We have a God who has chosen to make his very home within us.
And that means that even though I daily get frustrated with the accident prone container that I am, I am blessed by the truth that the contents within me are my Lord and my Savior and the one who has given me his eternal word that he will deliver me to my ultimate destination.
In the New Testament, when we are told that Mary composed a psalm of gratitude to her God after she was given the news that she was to become the earthly mother of the son of God, this was not an easy tune to sing. Remember, for her to accept the assignment and humbly obey her calling, it would mean that she would be forever an outcast. People would whisper behind her back the rest of her days, gossiping of impropriety.
If it wasn’t for some timely divine intervention, even Joseph would have divorced her quietly and her family removing her respectfully from society so as not to embarrass their good name. But Mary chose to not settle for a safe song. One that anybody could have sung anywhere, anytime, anyplace. Mary opened up her heart magnificently and accepted the masterpiece that the Lord of all had composed just for her.
It was the oratorio that would only be hers and nobody else’s. And she sang it loud and proud and obediently and nobody lived a life like Mary. My soul magnifies the Lord. My song must be sung so that God could be lifted up and known and understood and worshiped.
Pain may well remind us that we are alive, but God reminds us of why we are alive and love and music make the journey worth taking. We try so hard to fit in but in doing so we get left out of our unique script that God has authored just for us. It was Robert Kennedy who once said that, “Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, but not a guide by which to live.” The woes of any given trip are going to produce some aches and hurts and bumps and bruises.
You can’t unwrap a package and expect the product to remain showroom new. But with the use and the wear and the tear that come with the process also produces personal experiences and awesome adventures and special stories that are yours and yours alone. We all have histories and every individual has been given a soundtrack especially constituted by God to score the movements and the memories of the precious gift of breathing, but humans have a tendency to want to skip the bad times to only be able to encounter the euphoric situations.
There is no song without seeing the whole big picture within its proper context. There is no full appreciation of what majesty is all about if you have never tasted a desperate mess.
C.S. Lewis said that “What one regards as interruptions are precisely one life.” I believe that to mean while you are sitting around waiting for your specific but imaginary ship to come in, God has had a whole array of colorful boats floating all around you inviting you to come aboard and sail away with him! Open your eyes and in turn- open your heart! I sing today a song of joy that is not comprised of artificial ingredients nor is it a farce of forced cheap thrills.
It is the roar of Rudy’s road that makes me smile even as it makes me cry. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody else and yet I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. The notes just as they appear and the crescendos just at the precise spot and the key changes for the emotional highs and the melancholy minor chords for the depths of my lows are all necessary because all of it is what makes it my song.
I close with the words of the psalmist who belted out in the 56th song these life- giving lyrics: “God, I will offer you what I have promised; I will give you my offering of thanksgiving, because you have rescued me from death and kept me from defeat. And so I walk in the presence of God, in the light that shines on the living.”