Saturday Psalm: 2.3.24

It IS Good to Sing!

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The Saturday devotions focus on a part of a psalm – a verse, a phrase, even a single word. We pray that it is a blessing to you.

Psalm 147:1-11
v1
Praise the Lord!
For it is good to sing praises to our God;
    for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting.

I read that opening verse, and I want to stop reading. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not because I want to avoid the rest of the psalm. It’s because I want to take the direction and sing!

I mean, c’mon, look at those next few verses. They’re certainly not coherent prose, bouncing from descriptions of the Lord helping his people, to controlling Creation, to simply being great and powerful and just. I wouldn’t even say they’re the greatest poetry, though perhaps they have a better ring to them in the original Hebrew.

But as song lyrics … now we’re talking! (Er, singing.)

Some phrases are meant not to be sung, but spoken. And some phrases are meant not to be spoken, but sung. I can stumble over a great many psalms, the Hebrew hymnal, when I interact with them out of their musical context.

Chanting a psalm is … OK, if that’s all you can do. Chanting is best, though, with about 40 monks and a cathedral, which describes neither my home nor my car.

This is why I think it’s cool when a psalm really is sung. As psalm 147 is here. And here. And here. (Of those three versions, my favorite is the last one.)

And what I think is cool about this psalm is that it sings the praises of singing praises. I agree, it IS good to sing! I feel very blessed to have grown up with parents in the choir, to have attended a high school with mandatory chorus, to have a collection of hymnals next to my piano, to have had so many songs in so many genres to sing.

So next time you have a chance to cut loose on a song of praise, seize that chance. If I happen to be nearby, I’ll be the one hunting for the bass line, making harmony to our God.