Reading 16—Living in Joy
Psalm 98

READ PSALM 98

I love to sing. It is one of the things which I most love to do, especially with a choir or a congregation. If I were pushed to analyze the why of this, I would have to say that music and singing fills my heart with joy. Sitting on a bookshelf in my living room just above my CD player is a small plaque which reads, “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”, words of Aldous Huxley. There is something beautifully and powerfully mysterious about the effect music has on us humans and writers have been writing about this across the centuries.

• Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything. ~Plato
• He who sings prays twice. ~St. Augustine
• Music is a fair and glorious gift of God. ~Martin Luther
• Where words fail, music speaks. ~Hans Christian Anderson
• Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife. ~Kahlil Gibran
• Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable. ~Leonard Bernstein
• Music can change the world because it can change people. ~Bono
• If I cannot fly, let me sing. ~Stephen Sondheim

Psalm 98 is all about singing, all about praising God with song. And the psalmist gives us reason after reason why we should do this, reason after reason why using our voices—using music—is the highest form of giving praise to the Creator. “Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises,” the psalmist tells us, calls us to do. “Get out those instruments, too- the lyre, the trumpet, the horn, and make a joyful noise.”

Were you paying attention to the words? The “noise” we make, the praise we offer is to be joyful. No dour expressions or long faces as we worship, but rather the wonderful, mysterious, life-affirming expression of joy. For even all of nature offers such joy-filled praise: the floods and the hills, the sea and all its creatures…all offer their joyful singing to God, to the One who created and creates, to the One who loved and loves, to the One in whom we live and move and have our being. Praise be!

To Consider

What about worship makes you most joy-filled?

Is there a difference between happiness and joy? How would you describe this?
How does this psalm remind you of our oneness with other humans and all creation?

Holy Mystery, Creator of the Universe, we offer our songs of praise, our words of thanks, our hearts filled with the joy of knowing you and being recipients of your grace-filled love. Keep us ever mindful that, even in the midst of troubles, even in the midst of things we do not understand, you are present, upholding and empowering us, and for this we give you thanks. Amen and amen.

Hi, I’m Pastor Linda Faltin, a second-career and now-retired pastor. I am also mother of four and grandmother of nine. I have been a spiritual pilgrim for all of my life, writing my heart and journey into poetry for many years. An avid reader, I also love to travel and to hear the stories of people in many places. And I do love to sing!