Evangelicals Now
<< July 2003 >>

Monthly column on hymns and songs

Sing when you're winning?

'A man was a professional musician in a Muslim country. After coming to know the Lord Jesus, he studied abroad, then returned to his own country despite the risks involved. He arrived in time to organise the music and train a choir for a series of Christian outreach events. He was then warned by a government representative to stop his work or risk losing his life. He is now a refugee but his songs are still being used by Christians in the country. Give thanks for this man's ministry and pray that the Lord will protect him.'

Did you see that item earlier this year in the Prayer Notes of the Barnabas Fund? Its double anonymity of people and places comes as no surprise but is worth noting. We may not often think of composers and choir leaders as the front line of candidates for martyrdom; perhaps we should. Yes, we can sing the Lord's songs in some strange lands, but we shall not be too eager to fill in the copyright details or heap prizes on those who write them.

Why bother to sing at all? It's a bit like evangelism and prayer; we have a Scriptural command to do it (with new songs at that), but even without the specific and repeated injunctions, the Spirit-prompted desire rises from within our very being. Unlike the football crowds, we don't just sing when we're winning - except that we are always 'more than conquerors, through him who loved us'. We also sing when we seem to be losing: in exile, in captivity, in the valley of the shadow of death, and even walking out to meet the gallows, the gun or the flames. Our distinctive 'joy in tribulation' cannot be fully expressed in smiles, hand-signals or spoken words; somehow music keeps breaking out.

New hymns

Easy to write, isn't it? - for most of us have not yet had to face such terrible testing. But for those who have, troubled times and places are not just the backcloth for singing familiar hymns, but a fertile seedbed for growing new ones. Clearly they are still flowering and bearing much fruit.

From Bunyan to Bonhoeffer, prison itself can boast almost as many original texts as railway stations and train journeys. Many of the Psalms evidently grew out of desperate situations. Some of these are briefly recorded in their enigmatic titles. If we over-spiritualise the horrible pit and miry clay of No. 40, or the depths of No. 130, we are severely restricting their relevance and usefulness. Cries for help may arise from Egypt, Babylon, Israel itself, or places much nearer home.

In the valley

Don't miss the significance of Psalm 23.4: not only is there a way through, a remedy for fear, and most excellent company, but there is singing in the valley! Can you hear it? Can you join in? You may even be able to take a lead. 'He makes the saddest heart to sing'; not all the time, not everywhere, but often enough to delight the angels and amaze our neighbours, and to keep us well tuned for the music of heaven.

Meanwhile we could well keep a regular slot in our own prayer diaries for those anonymous authors, composers, singers and musicians whose shining faces will never adorn a decorative poster, a glossy album or a CD cover, but whose names are written in heaven and of whom this world is not worthy. Thank God, too, for the hymns and songs in maybe a thousand tongues which reach the hearts of millions in places where their originators must remain incognito - until That Day.

Christopher Idle