“Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.” Psalm 96:1

This past month, a visitor to Faith Lutheran Church Naples, FL, talked with me between services and this is basically the conversation we had:

Visitor: “This congregation sure seems to like to sing a lot” 

Pastor Don: “I guess I’ve never really thought about it. It’s just part of our DNA”

Visitor: “I really liked it – God’s Word touched my heart today”.

I guess we do sing a lot in church, and we sing more than just hymns. There are Praise Songs, Canticles (portions of scripture set to music”, and we chant or sing a lot of the liturgy. The Sunday the visitor was here we even sang “Happy Birthday” to a member in the Fellowship Hall. There is a good and simple reason why we sing so much at Faith, especially in worship. Singing feeds the mind and warms the soul.

Singing plays an enormous role in my life and in people’s lives throughout the world. People sing on birthdays, sing while driving the Florida roads, and sing lullabies to put babies to bed. At Faith, we sing to praise the goodness of our God, sing to learn/teach the faith, and sing to secure a firm foundation of faith in our lives for decades to come.

I really need to go to God’s Word and find the singing of hymns helps me get through some of the most challenging times of my life and the lives of the people I know. During the death of a loved one, prolonged illness, unemployment, or severe trial or temptation, there may be nothing more powerful to carry you through than to sing of Christ in hymns and praise songs such as “Beautiful Savior”, “Amazing Grace”, “A Might Fortress is Our God”, or “I can only Imagine”. When we struggle to express how we feel or think we may flounder. But, there is great strength in knowing that Christ is willing and able to preserve us in the faith through His Word and Sacraments and, very often, those Words come to us through singing of hymns and praise songs for the feeding of our minds and the warming of our souls. 

May our Lord continue to place these songs in our minds, hearts, and souls now and forevermore.

Singing a New (and some Old) Songs!

Pastor Don Treglown