What Will They Be Singing?

On Tuesday January 22 I participated in a “Right to Life” prayer event on the steps of City Hall in our community. I was asked to participate as a pastor in leading those gathered together in prayer. I was one among several pastors in our area who participated in leading those gathered to pray. It was an encouraging time of ecumenicalism as we pleaded together at the throne of grace for repentance and help in our time of need. But at the end of our time together we participated in ecumenical singing that we could not all participate in.

We were accompanied by a talented family who lead us with a guitar and their beautiful voices in a contemporary praise song. They asked that everyone present would sing along with them. As I sat at the top of the stairs with the other pastors I noted that not all were able to sing as we did not know this particular song. Also, as I watched those gathered at the foot of the stairs, in the street and on the sidewalk, I noticed that some participated and some did not because of being familiar or not with the song. And at this I wondered what would my children be singing in the years to come? What would the saints gathered together from different traditions sing in the years to come?

This question forced me to be repentant and thankful. I was repentant toward God because I do not think we are striving with great enough strength for the singing of God’s song book, the Psalms in our churches and our homes. If we were singing God’s songs from his Word we would know what Psalm would fit an occasion like this and we would as one body of Christ sing. We could have sung a song of repentance, or a song of the rule and reign of our Savior, or a song of lamentation, or an imprecatory song. And our children could sing with us because they would be learning to sing songs after God’s heart revealed in his Word. But instead we sang a new song that will not last past ten years and our children will have to invent something new to sing.

But I was also thankful for a discipline that we have begun in our church and family that will hopefully lead to the end of singing in homes and at church for the glory of God, and when called upon in the public square. On Sunday mornings, when we are gathered together for corporate worship, we read a particular Psalm or portion of that Psalm in unison. And then on Sunday evening, when we gather again for corporate worship, we sing that Psalm that we read on Sunday morning. In this we are reading and praying through God’s song book in corporate worship. But to tie it together to worship in the church and family we print it out on a family worship guide so that it can be learned and sung throughout the week in family worship gatherings. It is our hope that God’s people will learn God’s songs and love the opportunity of worship in song around his throne. And that this singing for the glory of God will be for our children and our children’s children.