November 6th, 2019

What supports its (the earth's) foundations? 

Or who laid its cornerstone

while the morning stars 

sang together

and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Job 38: 6-7

​

 Job speaks of the stars singing.  Perhaps he had in mind the resonance that radio astronomers have only recently begun to listen to with the aid of their vast dishes.  Or perhaps he meant the same kind of wordless song that only the silent light can sing.  Or maybe it was just his way of saying that the magnificent beauty of the stars is a kind of song in itself.

​

  The singing of the stars is a song I have sought to hear for most of my life.  Sometimes, by faith, I believe I hear it, singing of and to the Creator.  It reminds me of the vastness of who he is.  If the stars are singing, as the Bible says they are, I am as certain as faith can be that they are singing a chorus to Christ, who made them and by whose immense, wordless power their mass is held together and kept burning so brilliantly.  This chorus to Christ is a silent, wordless song, sung also with our lives and with whatever love we can lend to the chorus.  It is an ancient, timeless, ever-new song.

​

  In Revelation we read that a song will someday burst forth from all creation, from stars as well as starfish!  Perhaps what I desire at the depths of my soul and strain to hear now is only the prelude, maybe even just the tuning up of the orchestra.  When it does erupt, it will be a song that will never be forgotten - indeed, it will never cease to be sung.

​

  Rarely do we know all we sing.  I am continually learning from songs I have written.  Sometimes we need to write and sing songs to help us remember important truths we tend to forget with time.  Other times, songs enable us to put words to painful feelings, and just by singing them the hurt can be forgotten.  So songs help us to forget as well as remember.

​

  There was a time when the early church began to forget who Jesus was.  It was badly in need of a song to help it remember.  False teachers had crept in and were singing false songs about Jesus.  There was confusion about the nature of his divinity.  There were doubts as to the reality of his resurrection.  People were losing sight of what his life had been all about.