Songs of Remembrance. (Sunday Thoughts Link Up #42)
PSALM 143:5-6
I remember the days of long ago;
I meditate on all your works
and consider what your hands have done.
6 I spread out my hands to you;
I thirst for you like a parched land.
I wish I could wear phylacteries without being weird. Observant Jews can wear them during prayers. There would be something so comforting about rolling up those passages of scripture and placing them in their boxes and strapping them on to my body so that they could remind me with every movement of my arm, every turn of my head, that the word of God is true and with me, always.
Crosses on necklaces are a little like this, symbols to remember the sacrifice. But they are not words. They are not the rhythms of God’s voice humming like a current next to our skin.
There is a reason that we have national holidays to commemorate great leaders and war veterans and independence. We must remember all that has led up to the moment we are in so that we will continue to move in the right direction with the right amount of wisdom steered by hindsight. To look back can help us move forward. I think that’s what the phylacteries do and what we also do when we read and sing God’s words.
If we can sing our sadness and our trust, we can also sing to remember. We can remember the “Rock of Ages” who does not change and we can know that “His Eye is on the Sparrow”, our constant friend, and above all we can shout about the “Amazing Grace” that flooded our lives with mercy.
David remembered well. He remembered the wonderful and the terrible and recited it back to God just so He could see that David had taken note and would proceed as follows. David sang because that’s how he was wired; it was his love language. I will admit, singing is not mine. My introversion leans ever so slightly away from belting out a chorus in public. But my heart though, my heart loves to sing when we get going. It loves the feel of the collective deep breaths once I get over myself.
And songs of remembrance are my favorite. I learn the best with proof and that’s what these songs do. They stack experience upon experience like books on a shelf so I can peruse at my leisure, letting my mind linger over the spines of all He has carried me through. Songs of remembrance are songs of the good and the bad sandwiched together to say, “Look, I made it. I thought that one thing would be the end of me, oh, and that other thing too, but here I am. Maybe God really does know what He’s doing.”
Much like phylacteries, these songs of remembrance strap their words on my conscience and bind it up with observance of the past. They mark out the truths that God has promised: the ones that have been fulfilled and the ones I’m still waiting on.
It is a pleasure to “consider what your hands have done,” oh Lord.
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A big thank you from Jamie on The Mom Gene!
