Music I Sing

Aaron Menikoff's picture
Submitted by Aaron Menikoff on Thu, 01/21/2010 - 07:00

  
I'm not sure I'm the best person to write on music. With the exception of Sunday morning, music is something I listen to when I'm doing something else: driving, writing, sometimes even reading. This morning, as I prepared a Bible study, Leonard Bernstein was my background music. It was beautiful. In the early nineties, Huey Lewis and Billy Joel accompanied me from my hometown of Hillsboro to my college town of Eugene, Oregon, and back again. 

I remember that Brenda and Eddie were popular steadies and the king and the queen of the prom. Things seemed to go downhill from there. Kind of a sad song. I remember that song about the piano player, too. It was nine o'clock on a Saturday when the regular crowd shuffled in while some old man did something unmentionable on a Christian website to his tonic and gin. I remember Huey sung about the power of love but honestly I can't remember what the power of love (at least according to that song) is. So there you have it, my mind is a very small graveyard of pop songs from the eighties and nineties. Not impressive.
But then there are hymns. Now that is a different story. I don't care if the hymn was written recently or if it was written 1,000 years ago. I love to sing hymns, and I love to meditate on the words of hymns. This Sunday, we are singing a hymn that is new to us found in a collection called Grace Hymns. It is an Isaac Watts hymn. Here is the first stanza:

Show pity, Lord, O Lord, forgive
Let a repenting rebel live:
Are not Thy mercies large and free?
May not a sinner trust in Thee?

That about sums it up for me. I am a repenting rebel that deserves death and judgment. But I can plead with the Lord to forgive me. Though my forgiveness was purchased decisively on the cross, these words urge me to go back, again and again, in dependence upon God and trusting in his large and free mercies. Yes, a sinner like me may trust in him!

Sunday we are going to sing this and as we sing it we are going to pray it, and my prayer is that words like this, will help me draw near to God in repentance for I know he will come near to me.

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