Welcome to Living Word Lutheran Church
Living the Word...Spreading the Word
6108 Chester Street
Arlington, TN
from the pastor
How Can I Keep From Singing?
My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth's lamentation,
I hear the sweet, tho' far-off hymn
That hails a new creation;
Thro' all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul—
How can I keep from singing?
What tho' my joys and comforts die?
The Lord my Saviour liveth;
What tho' the darkness gather round?
Songs in the night he giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that refuge clinging;
Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,
How can I keep from singing?
I lift my eyes; the cloud grows thin;
I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smooths,
Since first I learned to love it,
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
A fountain ever springing;
All things are mine since I am his—
How can I keep from singing?
This hymn, written by Baptist pastor Robert Lowry in 1869, is filled with hope and promise while recognizing the realities and difficulties of life. In that regard it is reminiscent of many of the reading we hear during the season of Easter.
Singing and shouting praise to God, while naming life’s difficult situations, is a major theme in the Psalms. In fact, for any situation you might face in life you can find something that speaks to it in the Psalms. As Ecclesiastes 1;9 reminds us, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.”
The Easter season of this liturgical year also has weekly readings from Revelation. The last book of the Bible alternates between scenes of heavenly worship and scenes of strange and terrifying things happening on earth. Do not think that John of Patmos’s vision is some kind of road map to the future; it was written to provide hope and comfort to the people living under Roman persecution in the ancient near East in the early years of the Christian movement. It is written in ways that the intended audience could understand, but authorities could not if it fell into the wrong hands.
Revelation still provides us with hope and comfort if we read it rightly. Or sing it; when I read those heavenly worship scenes I find it hard to not sing it, as many of the passages have been set to music: Handel’s Messiah( Halleluia Chorus and Worthy is the Lamb). Our liturgy is all based on biblical texts; you might have recognized the words of “This is the Feast” in one of the recent readings from Revelation.
In any situation of your life, tell yourself, “There’s a song for that. There’s a biblical passage for that.” Good stuff, bad stuff; we have access to great resources to help us celebrate, lament, pray, grieve. How can we keep from singing?
Pastor LaVonne Johnson
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