We are on a journey.
A journey that is bigger than you.
A
journey that is bigger than me.
A journey that is bigger than we can ever begin
to grasp.
We are on God’s journey, held in the palm of God’s
hand and guided on the path that we should take.
This path takes us places that we could never imagine,
twists that are right where we are meant to be.
And along the way, God places people in our path to
remind us that we are part of something so much bigger than our part of the
world. He places people and events in our path that prod us take the blinders
off and realize that we are part of God’s ever-widening plan.
The language of this journey is voiced in many ways.
One of these voices is the voice of our hymnody, our
song. Through the language of hymnody, we hear the stories of this journey
told, from every place and every time. And while we can study this concept and
we can believe we have a full grasp on this concept, it is not until you are
immersed in the waters of God’s story, through the rich blend of the ages’
harmony, that we can truly begin to see how wide and how deep God’s story of
unending love is to all of the world.
In our ever-changing society, we have the privilege and
responsibility to engage with people from all lands, telling the story of how God has
been faithful to all of us. In a society that has access to the writings of
past generations, we too have a privilege and responsibility to listen wisely
to the stories and wisdom of those who have gone before us.
It is through a tapestry of these stories, woven
together, that we can learn the stories of God’s love in all times and all
places. This tapestry goes back and speaks through the words of the Psalms and
it goes back to the early church. It has strands of the words of the
Reformation, the great Revivals, and Vatican II. It has voices of the mega-churches
and it has voices from the farms of Iowa.
This tapestry is our hymnody.
This past week I have the privilege of journeying with
God to a place that I could have never dreamed about, doing things I never
could fathom. I had the chance to lead worship and engage in conversation about
hymnody with the leaders of the Christian Reformed Church at Synod. The focus
of our conversations and our worship was to share this story of a journey—the
journey of the story of the church from all times and all places.
It is
these hymns that give voice to the journey.
The journey of our collective faith, from all times and all places.
And so, next time you lift your voice in song, remember that you are not alone.
Stop.
Look around.
Listen as you sing.
God has given us an amazing gift of the people around us. But more than that. Stop and remember--God is faithful not just to us or our congregation. God has been faithful to people from all times and all places.
And this is all part of the story. The story of the journey of faith.
The journey of our collective faith, from all times and all places.
And so, next time you lift your voice in song, remember that you are not alone.
Stop.
Look around.
Listen as you sing.
God has given us an amazing gift of the people around us. But more than that. Stop and remember--God is faithful not just to us or our congregation. God has been faithful to people from all times and all places.
And this is all part of the story. The story of the journey of faith.
