For most of my life, making music has been a vital ingredient of my personal joy. From the very first duets with my sister at about age 5 when my father taught us to sing in harmony, to the massed choirs and audiences of our CfaN crusades and Fire conferences all over the world, music has always been there, a comfort in times of grief, a fiery sword in times of spiritual battle. I can't count the times I have stood in the shower, my tears mingling with the hot water stinging my face, singing at the top of my voice: ‘God will make a way where there seems to be no way, He works in ways we cannot see...he will make a way’ until the Peace quietened my storming emotions.!
These days, as I navigate my 8th decade, there are days when I want no words, only music. I sit at my piano, lift the lid and from some deep cave of memory a beloved song rises and as I pick out the melody, often my voice gets drowned in my tears. I am told that old age makes a person sentimental. I don't think that's the reason.
We know that sound waves don't die. Their length just gets longer and longer, theoretically going on way beyond what our ears can discern. Is it a romantic notion that as I sing the music of my life, somehow my worshiping voice is picked up by up the long waves of the voices of those gone before, and what I am hearing in my spirit is a foretaste of the music of heaven?
Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying:
“You are worthy to take the scroll,
And to open its seals;
For You were slain,
And have redeemed us to God by Your blood
Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
And have made ]us kings and priests to our God;
And we shall reign on the earth.” Revelation 5:8-10