“When in our Music God is Glorified,” ELW 850, 851 and LBW 555
Devotion
In 1948, the famous theologian Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded his community that, “There must be always remaining in every man’s life some place for the singing of angels.” This phrase, like the hymn selected for today’s meditation, is like a choir director’s baton used to lead us into music. Perhaps we could sing with the mystery of angels or incline an ear to their sounds. Who knows what music may be made?
For Lutherans it is evident that singing is not only the vocation of heavenly realm. Our vocation is to sing that same glory even when steeples are falling and kingdoms pretend to secure their borders through swift weapons that do not negotiate.
Perhaps music will recover the generous spirit behind Scripture’s deep ecology of faith that values all life as sacred. It is, after all, to the glory of God that we harmonize with the angels to remember how blessed we are. Let the music sing.
Prayer
Dear God, how oft, in making music, we have found a new dimension in the world of sound, as worship moves us to a more profound alleluia. Amen.