Thank You for the Music

“So I say
Thank you for the music, the songs I’m singing
Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing
Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance what are we?
So I say thank you for the music
For giving it to me.”*

We recently traveled the Alberta highway from Jasper to Lake Louise,  so beautiful with its mountains and waterfalls and lakes.   Further down the shore away from the crowds at the edge of Lake Louise, I heard music and followed it to its source, a college choral group from BYU recording in the national park.  It was a musical gift, an extra measure of grace for a cup that was already full of gratitude, a marvelous setting for their music.  When we are overwhelmed with its intricacy and grandeur, nature calls out praise.
Our human nature also thrills when we praise God.  I have also been part of choral groups in arduous and painstaking practices, and felt the joy as orchestra and singers come together in the final dress rehearsal.  Music can draw your heartstrings to be in tune with hymns that exalt or mourn in lament so that a congregation experiences itself as one body.
In Romans 15 (MSG) Paul recognizes how each Christian, in response to a great Conductor, becomes a part of a symphony of rejoicing.  “May our dependably steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you, so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all.  Then we’ll be a choir – not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to the God and Father of our Master Jesus.”
Awesome!

*Songwriters: Benny Goran Bror Andersson / Bjoern K. Ulvaeus Thank You for the Music lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group, ABBA