The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.
Psalm 28:7 NIV
Thanksgiving With Song
Canadian songwriter David Foster collaborated with Josh Groban on the lyrics to the singer’s hit song Thankful. The words say, “Somedays, we forget to look around us, somedays, we can’t see the joy that surrounds us. So caught up inside ourselves we take when we should give. So, for tonight we pray for what we know can be and, on this day, we hope for what we still can’t see. It’s up to us, to be the change and even though we all can still do more, there’s so much to be thankful for.”
***
On one of our trips to the Holy Land, we visited the offices of the Temple Institute, a Jewish organization that is preparing for the building of a new Temple in Jerusalem, when the geopolitics would allow this to happen. They showed us watercolour paintings of what the worship would have looked at in the previous temples, and it included hundreds of musicians with trumpets, horns, and stringed instruments. They then said, “without music, there would be no temple worship.” God’s people have always been people of music and music has always been a primary form of praise. King David speaks to this in Psalm 28:7: “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.” As I read this verse, something struck me. David speaks about praising God with his song. This is one of the interesting things about music in worship. There is power in congregational singing – God’s people singing the same song together. At the same time, it is very personal – expressing praise from each individual heart.
These have been words from the heart.
Bob Beasley