Day of Praise

We, 02/10/16, Ash Wednesday, "Day of Praise"

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, which is a season to begin Bible-based disciplines to remember and grow in the immeasurable love of Jesus. I wrote the following devotion a couple years ago on Ash Wednesday (March 5, 2014), which happened to be the day before my dad died. It sang to me then and still does today as I pray it will sing to you today. 

Psalm 147:1 - "Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting."

It is good! It is good to sing!

Around my dad's hospital bed yesterday, we sang hymns out of the Lutheran Book of Worship. We sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" and "For the Beauty of the Earth" and other traditional hymns. Dad loved it and hummed or sang in a very muttered way as best he could, but it's not a stretch to say that he was leading the singing. After all, it was his idea. It is good! It is good to sing!

Some of you might be saying, "I could never sing in a hospital." Maybe you think your singing hurts other people's ears. But actually, not singing hurts you!

Here's a link to a fascinating article that explains what God said long ago: "It is good! It is good to sing!" (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/12/26/144152193/singing-therapy-helps-stroke-patients-speak-again) In sum, for more than 100 years, it's been known that people who can't speak after injury to the speech centers on the left side of the brain can sing. In the 1970s, Boston researchers started to use a sort of "singing therapy" to help stroke survivors speak again. However, it never caught on much, but in recent years that's changing fast.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who has had a version of "singing therapy," astounded everyone by her ability to speak again after a would-be assassin's bullet tore through the speech center in Giffords' left brain. Giffords' progress came about in large part because Giffords' loved ones, like a growing number of doctors, bought into God's truth: It is good! It is good to sing!

And it's even better when those words are songs of hope and praise from God's word. For just as my father attested yesterday when we were around his bed, no matter how physically weak a heart and mind may be, singing songs of hope and praise to God brings real renewal, strength and comfort to both the human heart and mind.

So, maybe for Lent, which starts today, you could take on the discipline of singing a little everyday because God's Word is true. "Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting." (Psalm 147:1)

Praise God!

Pastor Chris 
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson

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