We returned from Annual Conference a couple of weeks ago. The theme this year was “Come and See,” taken from John’s Gospel, when Nathaniel was talking to Phillip about Jesus. Nathaniel told Phillip where Jesus was from, and Phillip asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathaniel simply says, “Come and see.” I tell you that to tell you there’s been this song stuck in my head for two weeks. It’s been going around and around, and for the life of me, I can’t get it out. It’s driving me crazy! The title of the song is “Can Anything Good Come Out of Nazareth,” and we sang it several times throughout the week. I’d play it for you, but it wouldn’t help to get it out of my head, and then you’d hate me because it would be stuck in your head, too. The fact that the song is still going around in my head is evidence of the power of music to capture us. Songs we hear, even in childhood, have a way of sticking with us through the years. Perhaps William Congreave was correct in saying, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks, to bend a knotted oak.”
Music captures us, moves us and communicates in ways that our hearts and minds can understand. I think music is one of the ways God gives us to live beyond the daily grind of life. That’s the problem with life: it is lived so daily. Life can drag us down, but we can hear a song and be lifted, if even only momentarily. I believe there is a lot of God’s grace in music.
The ancient Hebrews also knew the power of music, and their most prolific song writer, and their most famous king, knew the power of music to change the mood. King David communicated so much of the nation’s history through the songs we call the psalms. He would sing of God’s faithfulness when life was overwhelming, of God’s deliverance from the captivity of nations and enemies, of God’s mercy in extending his forgiveness. David would sing when he was depressed and when he was afraid, and David would sing in celebration. David just wanted to sing. He sang his faith.
Psalm 30 was a song of faith, and it was likely sung during a time of celebration. The title gives us a clue: A Psalm of David: sung at the Dedication of the Temple. No, David didn’t build the Temple. We know from scripture that God told David he had been too bloody throughout the years, so David couldn’t build the Temple. But, God promised that David’s son would build it. So what does David do? He sets about making plans, gathering materials and leaving instructions. Some commentators believe David wrote this psalm and left it with Solomon along with the instructions to sing it when he dedicated the Temple he would build. We don’t know for sure when he wrote these words, but we know they were written by a person who had felt both the great absence and the abiding presence of God. David’s song slips so easily from security to dismay, but it eventually ends at hope. Hope gave rise to the music of David’s heart as he sang, “weeping may go on all night, but joy comes with the morning” (v. 5). That’s an optimistic faith!
I love roller coasters. When the children were younger, one of the things we did every year was make our way to different theme parks to experience the thrill of riding different coasters. Life has been compared to a roller coaster, filled with ups and downs, twists and turns. There is exhilaration, disappointment, excitement, anticipation, and, don’t forget, sometimes there is fear. As each of us has ridden this roller coaster that is life, we, like the psalmist, have gone through times when we felt God incredibly near, and then other times, we’ve wondered if God was anywhere to be found. I’m only talking about the awareness of God’s presence, not the reality of it. God is always present, whether we realize it or not.
I’ve told you of my time in 2008 when I hit the brick wall spiritually. One of things I did during my sabbatical time was meet regularly with a spiritual director—someone who could ask me the right questions to carry me deeper and help discern God’s call. I confessed there were times in those days when I felt God was missing. I couldn’t feel Him or see Him. This wise old Catholic nun simply looked at me and said, “Perhaps God is so close you can’t see him.” All it took was simple change in my perception to begin to change my life. David’s song indicates that he would not be swayed by his ability to perceive or not perceive of God’s presence. He would trust God in the down times and he would praise God in the up times. Praise led David to hope and hope brought David joy.
We’re too apt to think joy is fleeting. We see the joy in our children, and we say, even if under our breath, “Enjoy it now, the real world is waiting when you get older.” Or we see a couple of newlyweds, and what do we tell them? “The honeymoon won’t last forever.” Or, as John Maxwell says, “Dating brings out the best. Marriage brings out the rest.” David’s song reminds us that weeping is that which is fleeting. Joy is that which overcomes. It was an expression of hope in a doubting world. My friends, that’s the word this world needs to hear, and the world needs to hear it from we who believe that hope is found in Jesus Christ. A person caught in the misery and pain of broken relationships, or addiction, or sin needs to hear that there is hope! We must have an optimistic faith.
Where does this faith come from? Not from hiding our heads in the sand. David didn’t deny the tragedies of life. He didn’t deny that he cried. He didn’t deny the reality of his own sin. He didn’t deny that life could sometimes seem overwhelming. Yet, he continued to praise. I take a lot of comfort in David’s words. He’s the teacher who’s been there. There’s nothing like having a teacher who has actually experienced what he or she teaches. Our own Ernie Bruce was an aviation instructor at ULM, but he was also a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. When Ernie taught about flight instruction and helicopter techniques, he taught from experience, not simply theory.
That’s our lives, friends. David was expressing a faith that weathered the storm. We are those who’ve weathered the storm. When we sing a song of joy out of brokenness, our lives testify to the faithfulness of God who has sustained us, and that leads us to praise, and praise leads to hope, and hope leads to joy. Literally our mourning is turned to dancing, and our transformation becomes a testimony of God’s faithfulness.
In November 1873, the world’s most luxurious ocean liner, the French liner Ville du Harve, was docked in New York Harbor. Passengers were boarding for the trans-Atlantic voyage that lay ahead. Among the passengers that day were Mrs. H. G. Spafford and her four daughters, Maggie, Tanetta, Annie and Bessie. Mr. Spafford was unable to make the trip because business concerns in Chicago as a result of the Great Chicago Fire that had crumpled his once vast business empire. Spafford had bid his family good-bye and had promised to come to England as quickly as circumstances would allow. He sent them ahead feeling they needed the time away.
At two o’clock in the morning on November 22, 1873, the liner was rammed by the English iron sailing vessel, the Loch Earn. In less than two hours, the Ville du Harve lay at the bottom of the Atlantic. Two hundred twenty-six people lost their lives, including the four Spafford daughters. Nine days later, Mrs. Spafford reached Wales with the other survivors and was able to cable her husband in Chicago these two words: “Saved alone.” In the same year, Horatio Spafford had lost his business and his daughters. He confided to a friend, “I am glad to trust the Lord when it will cost me something.” It was December before Spafford was able to book passage to be with his wife in Europe. As they were sailing, the captain of the ship called for Spafford to come to his cabin, and he informed him, “I believe we are now passing over the place where the Ville du Harve went down.”
Sleep came hard for Spafford that evening, but faith conquered the doubt, and there in the mid-Atlantic, out of his heart break and pain, Horatio Spafford took pen in hand and wrote five stanzas, the first of which read:
When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
“It is well, it is well with my soul!”
Mrs. Spafford would comment to Mr. Spafford upon their reunion, “I have not lost my children. We are only separated for a little time.”
Three years later, Horatio Spafford asked Philip Bliss to set his poem to music. On the last Friday in November, almost three years to the day from Spafford’s great tragedy, Bliss introduced the song, It is Well with My Soul to a group of almost one thousand ministers. The ink had hardly dried on the manuscript when Mr. Bliss and his wife boarded a train from Buffalo, NY, to Chicago. On the journey, a bridge crossing a ravine gave way and the train and its seven cars plunged into the icy river below. Only 14 of the 169 passengers survived. One of the survivors reported that Mr. Bliss had escaped, but as his wife was hopelessly trapped in the wreckage, her remained at her side, and they faced the on-rushing flames and death together.
There is no earthly grave for the Spafford children or for Bliss and his wife, but the song born out of one tragedy and that preceded another lives forever as a testimony to one man who sang an optimistic faith in the face of overwhelming circumstances.
What circumstances are overwhelming you right now? Sing praise to God in the midst of those circumstances. You’ll discover the weeping of this moment replaced by the joy only God can give. Why? Because of Jesus Christ. The weeping of God’s creation for redemption was turned to bountiful joy when the morning of the third day dawned, and Jesus rose with victory over death. The mourning of the disciples was turned to joyful dancing as the risen Lord stood among them. Our weeping is but a passing thing…passing to be replaced by the joy of the resurrection that dawns upon us whenever we encounter Jesus Christ. Sing praise, my friend. Sing praise. And soon, you’ll find your feet moving, moving with hope and filled with joy, because life is song we’re supposed to be dancing to.
