Singing: One of God's Best Ideas, Part 2

I wanted to follow up on a statement from my post last week on singing.  I mentioned that the most repeated admonition in the Bible is “Do not be afraid” and the second most repeated is “Sing.”  Some people have called those “commandments,” but I think “commandment” can’t be a good term for what God is saying here.  A “commandment” conveys the idea of someone ordering you to do something.  But who can be ordered to stop being afraid?  That’s an emotion that we may not be in control of.  And I suppose God could order us to sing, but that’s not much better than the Israelites complaining in Psalm 137 that their captors “demanded songs of joy; they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’”  But they couldn’t do it.  In response, they hung their harps on the poplars and sat and wept by the rivers of Babylon.  

There are times we can’t sing.  Or we could only sing songs of lament.  And there are times we can’t help being afraid because there’s something legitimate to be afraid of.  But what God is doing here is trying to help us, not order us around.  When He tells us to not be afraid, He’s saying, “Here’s that place where you really need to trust Me.  The threat is real, but I’ve got this.  I will fight for you.”  When He tells us to sing, He’s helping us change our outlook, find “the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”  (Philippians 4:8 The Message) And songs of lament may be the only right thing at the time.  Did anyone see the Met performance of Verdi’s Requiem on September 11 to honor the 9/11 victims? It was beautiful and poignant and sad and unifying.

God is telling us these things for our benefit.  Did you know the Ten Commandments aren’t even called “commandments” in the Bible?  The Hebrew term is the “ten words” or the “ten sayings” or “ten declarations.”  You can look at them as autocratic commandments, or you can look at them as God’s words, His sayings, His declarations to us about how to live. He’s saying, “This is how it works, folks. I know the Way.”  And that’s what Christianity was first called in the Bible:  The Way (Acts 9:2) The challenge is not to get all the commandments right, like the Pharisees tried to do.  The challenge is to live centered around God, seeing The Way to life.

Photo credit: (Richard Termine/The Metropolitan Opera via AP)