How good it is to sing praises to our God,
how pleasant and fitting to praise him!” Psalm 147:1
I remember a certain species of goosebumps, my first. I was twelve maybe, part of a choir festival a half century ago in a small town in Wisconsin, hundreds of kids drawn from a dozen Christian schools. The music was Bach—“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” For almost fifty years I’ve not been able to hear that piece without remembering that day. My entire self—heart, soul, mind, and strength—reacted to the beauty of the moment.
Those goosebumps arrived in an afternoon rehearsal before the big concert at night—I remember that. I remember what that gymnasium looked like, which step I occupied on the bleachers, and some of the kids around me; and I remember being embarrassed because this unmanly tearful impulse—which I loved anyway—was still a threat that required some early drafts of testosterone to stifle.
The music was gorgeous. But my girlfriend was there, and I haven’t forgotten that either. She stood a row or two beneath me in the choir, and her being there was part of this strange emotional seizure I experienced. I don’t know that the music alone would have raised such a visceral reaction. My seeing her, a row or two beneath me was part of the moment too.
And I suppose faith was part of it—we were singing about Jesus, of course, and we were all kids from Christian schools; and then there was the beautiful music too—we couldn’t do much better than J. S. Bach; and my girlfriend—most of us experience love long before we can define it. Being part of something so much bigger than myself had to play a role as well—all these kids were making a beautiful, joyful noise.
Psalm 147 says, first thing out of the box, how pleasant it is praise him—how pleasant. It’s an amazingly human assertion: praising God feels good. The first declaration of this psalm has nothing to do with our duty (“we should praise him”) or his wanting our praise. Instead, the psalm starts with the Me Generation: hey, it feels good. And it’s fitting too.
I wonder whether my skin turned inside out and my tears ducts spontaneously threatened because, maybe for the first time, my “self” almost disappeared. I got lost in the music, lost in affection, lost in the joyful affirmation of group love that is choral music, lost in all those things, lost in plain beauty, just flat-out lost.
Self-lessness is a good thing. Love is selfless. Heroism is selfless. Vivid spiritual experience is always selfless. When Mariane Pearl heard of her husband Danny’s brutal execution at the hands of terrorists, she said she was able to handle it because she’d been chanting. She’s Hindu. “The real benefit of having practiced and chanted was that at that moment was that I was so clear on what was going on. This is a time when I didn’t think about myself at all,” she says.
Sometimes it’s just good to lose yourself. It’s good to praise, to give yourself to God. It’s good to love, to give yourself away. Praise—whether it’s evoked by a Bach chorale or bright new dawn—gives us a chance to empty ourselves.
And that’s good, I think, and it’s pleasant, I know, and it’s fitting before the King—our King, the joy of man’s desiring.
The music was gorgeous. But my girlfriend was there, and I haven’t forgotten that either. She stood a row or two beneath me in the choir, and her being there was part of this strange emotional seizure I experienced. I don’t know that the music alone would have raised such a visceral reaction. My seeing her, a row or two beneath me was part of the moment too.
And I suppose faith was part of it—we were singing about Jesus, of course, and we were all kids from Christian schools; and then there was the beautiful music too—we couldn’t do much better than J. S. Bach; and my girlfriend—most of us experience love long before we can define it. Being part of something so much bigger than myself had to play a role as well—all these kids were making a beautiful, joyful noise.
Psalm 147 says, first thing out of the box, how pleasant it is praise him—how pleasant. It’s an amazingly human assertion: praising God feels good. The first declaration of this psalm has nothing to do with our duty (“we should praise him”) or his wanting our praise. Instead, the psalm starts with the Me Generation: hey, it feels good. And it’s fitting too.
I wonder whether my skin turned inside out and my tears ducts spontaneously threatened because, maybe for the first time, my “self” almost disappeared. I got lost in the music, lost in affection, lost in the joyful affirmation of group love that is choral music, lost in all those things, lost in plain beauty, just flat-out lost.
Self-lessness is a good thing. Love is selfless. Heroism is selfless. Vivid spiritual experience is always selfless. When Mariane Pearl heard of her husband Danny’s brutal execution at the hands of terrorists, she said she was able to handle it because she’d been chanting. She’s Hindu. “The real benefit of having practiced and chanted was that at that moment was that I was so clear on what was going on. This is a time when I didn’t think about myself at all,” she says.
Sometimes it’s just good to lose yourself. It’s good to praise, to give yourself to God. It’s good to love, to give yourself away. Praise—whether it’s evoked by a Bach chorale or bright new dawn—gives us a chance to empty ourselves.
And that’s good, I think, and it’s pleasant, I know, and it’s fitting before the King—our King, the joy of man’s desiring.
_________________
From Sixty at Sixty, CRC Publications, 2008.
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