Dawn Chorus

I have joined the RSPB.  Much as you might attract a hedgehog with a bowl of cat food, I am easily attracted to a promotional table by really cute animal pictures.  The lady seemed quite happy to have an audience of one who was quite happy to listen.  My trolley of paid goods had nothing frozen and about to defrost so I had time for her to complete the sales pitch.

I was up at the crack of dawn, or just before it seeing as there was no bird song.  I was up because it was nagging at me that no one had put out the bin the precious night.  A quick mental estimate of how much was in the bin and whether it could wait another two weeks had kept me sleeping less than soundly.  “Use it or lose it!” might be applied to all sorts of things but it certainly applies to the bin collections.  Once upon a time it was a weekly collection.  Now it is fortnightly and there were mumblings of reducing it further to once every three weeks.  Hygienically it sounds like a plan for disaster.

So, yes, I was awake very early.  I decided to put out the bin and then go back to bed.  With what had kept me awake most of the night dealt with I anticipated I would sleep well.

We used to keep the bin at the front of the house out of sheer laziness. The neighbours didn't complain, but I didn't want to give them one more reason to wish they, or we, lived elsewhere. It’s quite a hike down the back garden, out of the gate, around the block, past the front of the house and around the corner. It’s not a quiet trip either.  I dare say that I woke up one or two light sleepers but no one poked a head out of a window to tell me to keep the noise down. I had remembered to unlock the front door so the journey home wasn’t so long.

As I had my hand on the door handle the first bird peeped or warbled. 

I was in time for nature’s great concert!

I was already wrapped up warm – big coat over flannelette nightie.  I sat one the bench underneath our front window and settled down to listen.  The sky was light grey ribbons on a darker grey.  The moon was a pale smudge wrapped up in dark clouds.

We all have this thing about the good old days being better.  I remember dawn choruses which were very noisy ones.  It was like switching the birds on or something and everything joining in. Perhaps I just didn’t wait long enough.  It wasn’t really a choir performance, just a series of solos. I wondered if the choir-master bird had slept in, or with so many birds on holiday in warmer climes, they had agreed to tone it down or give it a miss altogether.

It did occur to me that there were just not as many birds as there used to be.  Human beings were building houses and taking away precious habitats.  Other human beings had given up on gardens and paved over grass and flower borders to create a space for the car. Yes, it’s entirely possible that there are less birds.

I gave it a good half hour.  Dark grey sky morphed into light grey sky with a few light blue ribbons.  No rosy glow on the horizon.  I went back in, abandoned going back to bed in favour of a cup of tea and a quiet time.  

It occurred to me – what a wonderful way to start a day – with singing!  Imagine if the first sound you make in the morning wasn’t a groan or a well-aimed swear word at the alarm clock or even the deep rumble of flatulence.

I don’t think we sing enough as a species.  Birds have definitely got it right on this one. Maybe we think we have nothing to sing about but perhaps in the singing we discover what it is.

God Sings

Our Saturday routine usually begins with breakfast or brunch out somewhere.  OK so it’s decadent.  It is a luxury that we could do without.  There is nothing to stop me cleaning the grill pan some weekday night and buying all the breakfast ingredients for the Saturday – and sometimes I do.  We don’t have many vices and it’s nice to let someone else deal with the grill pan and the washing up afterwards.

This Saturday it was a late morning brunch…more like a lunch.  Yes, it was lunch.  Both the husband and I had not been well throughout the week.  His illness was more serious than mine.  He was prescribed a course of antibiotics.  I drank Lemsip.  He made it into work.  I dived beneath the duvet in the front room to watch re-runs of “Babylon 5”.

We went to a café in town called Little Italy.  The “Little” part was apt.  It was a little space packed full of tables.  The walls were festooned with black and white framed pictures of what might have been Italian film stars, or possibly the Mafia.

We were coming to the end of our meal.  I was interrogating Joe about his meal – some kind of Italian sausage and mozzarella layered creation in tomato sauce.  It looked like something I could re-create at home.

Suddenly the waiter, a man called Alphonso, broke into song.  I looked around to see if a birthday cake was going to emerge from somewhere.  But no, this was just a song.  It was in Italian – what else?  We were in Little Italy.  Alphonso, not the youngest of waiters I have ever encountered, had the most glorious voice.  We are not talking opera – just an Italian Bring Crosby kind of voice.   There was no band playing, no accordion or guitar – just Alphonso.  Someone asked him afterwards if he did requests.  He confessed that he chooses his songs carefully to flatter his voice, paying careful attention to the key. 

It was so incredibly unexpected.  If breakfast out somewhere is not decadent enough, being serenaded while you eat it – In Inverness – is that much better!

It was kind of nice during my duvet days to spend quality time reading the Bible and, I would say meditating but the brain wasn’t capable of that kind of activity.  I read and I let the word just wash over me.  I am a Bible passage-dissector so it was nice not to do that. 

It says in Psalm 42:8 “By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.”

Listening to the radio one morning, the man doing word for the day talked about making New Year’s resolution and how it’s a silly idea because we all break them anyway.  He proposed making the whole year a year of something.  For him it was going to be a year of patience and a year of being kind to people. I liked the idea, gave it some thought and decided to make this year for myself to be “the year of singing”. 

Reading through different versions of the Bible I am not sure who is doing the singing in Psalm 42:8.  Some would say it is the writer of the psalm that is singing the songs given to him by God.  Other versions would say that it’s God doing the singing.  Both have their appeal but I like the picture of God singing.  A song at night makes me think of a lullaby.  There is surely nothing more comforting to a child than a parent singing a lullaby.

Of course the “night” referred to doesn’t have to be a literal night.  Dark times happen when we go through difficult times – the space we occupy long before we see the light at the end of the tunnel.  There are some that would still keep singing in the middle of the dark space and remind us that we are more than conquerors.  I think that God sings to us during those hard times when, perhaps, we just can’t sing. 

He gives me His songs in the night

When dark are the clouds and hard is the fight

The times when my soul is downcast

He sings of His love that is mighty and vast

A Song the Angels Can’t Sing

Once upon a time, when my husband and I were courting, I had this strong urge – yes, courting couples have to deal with strong urges. I had the urge to serenade my husband.

Late one night, with a moon shining overhead I wanted to stand beneath his bedroom window (or beside it seeing as he lived in a bungalow) and sing a love song. If I had been able to play any musical instrument, I might have given into the urge but as it was I wasn’t sure that I could convince a guitar playing friend to help out. Well, let’s be honest here, I think she would have been more than up for it as she was a romantic at heart. I am not always as courageous as I would like to be. I find it hard to get beyond the people-will-laugh-at-me stage.

I regret not doing it. There are just some things you need to do just because the moment will never come again. Some events, like falling in love, just need to be marked. I know that it is supposed to be the man that does the serenading – but it would never have occurred to Joe to so something like that. I wouldn’t claim to have a pitch perfect singing voice so perhaps it was all for the best.

I picked up a book in the sale at our local Christian bookshop - “Beyond Amazing Grace”.

My knowledge of John Newton who wrote Amazing Grace is very limited. I knew that he was a captain of a slave ship and he had an encounter with God that changed him. The film of the same title follows the life of William Willberforce. John Newton is there, in the film, barefoot and mopping the church floor saying, “I was blind but now I see.” I didn’t realise that he had written scores of other hymns.

The book is a collection of his hymns, extracts from letters and sermons. One section of a book has the heading “Songs angels cannot sing.” There is some debate about whether angels can sing at all. One person said that seeing as angels do not have physical bodies they wouldn’t have vocal chords so they can’t sing. Another scholar looked carefully at some of the references in the Bible where we think they are singing and the word in the sentences is “say” or “shout”. Another scholar pointed out that in Western Churches saying is simply just that – saying. In Eastern Churches saying is not really saying at all but singing or chanting. The liturgy of a church service is sung.

One of my favourite verses, which isn’t about angels singing, but God singing is Zephaniah 3:17

“The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

It seems to me that a God who sings will surround himself with others who sing. In Ephesians 5:19 we are encouraged to follow in our Father’s footsteps:

“speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord.”

Poetry and song writing are not entirely unconnected. I can write poetry. What is a song without music but a poem? What is a poem but a song waiting to be put to music? Just what songs are the angels singing? Here’s what the song the shepherds heard.

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
(Luke 2:14)

St John heard a different song in his vision of heaven while on the island of Patmos.

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honour and glory and praise!”
(Rev 5:12)

The song the angels cannot sing is the Song of the Redeemed.

“Those the LORD has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away." (Isaiah 51:10-12

When the angels fell from heaven led by Lucifer there were no second chances – no chance to repent. They had no excuse to turn away from God. They are not rescued by God and restored. Those that never fell had nothing to be rescued from. They can sing about God’s salvation, but is not a song born out of their experience.

Just because they can’t sing it doesn’t mean that they don’t love to hear it when it’s sung. I can imagine that when Paul and Silas began singing the Song of the Redeemed in the Philippian jail angels turned their heads to listen. Maybe they leaned against the walls of the jail as they listened. Maybe it was all the angels leaning on the walls of the prison that brought them down!

I wonder how often the angels hear the Song of the Redeemed. I am not sure that Christians today are singing it as loudly and as lustily as they should. If we sing it at all, it’s under our breath, perhaps just quietly hummed. More likely the songs that we sing are dirges and laments. We more often complain and grizzle about our hard lives and our trials. It’s not a song that lures the angels to listen and join in.

The absence of the Song of the Redeemed – if Paul and Silas had kept silent in the prison, or if their song had been one of complaint, chains would not have fallen off, prison walls would not have tumbled down.

The Song of the Redeemed is a powerful song. More things happen than just music filling the air and people exercising their lungs. Chains fall off, prison walls collapse…but too often they remain intact because the redeemed don’t sing anymore. They sing with their lips, perhaps, but the Song of the Redeemed gets its power from the heart and the spirit. It’s a declaration of God’s salvation – not as a done deed gathering dust on a shelf somewhere but as an ever-present, dynamic reality.

Get singing!

More than a Song

I am feeling somewhat frustrated at the moment. I am not sure that much of what I experience on a Sunday qualifies as worship. At the end of a meeting where I was leading worship, I was left thinking – did we just song songs or did we worship? Just becuase one or two people lift up their hands - does that mean anything? Are they just going into "worship mode" or are they genuinely in the presence of God?

On Thursday night I went to a meeting at a local church. The new Culloden Visitor’s Centre is due to be opened some time and the church felt the need to meet together to celebrate that today Culloden isn’t the battlefield it was some two or three hundred years ago. There were men in kilts!

We began the meeting with a time of worship. Worship has got to be more than singing songs, no matter how modern. There was a string of songs – some old and some new, with all the words projected on to the white bit of the wall. Some of the songs had nice lyrics, perhaps even adapted from scripture.

In amongst them all was “Shine Jesus Shine” which, if you did not know, was voted number ten in the top one hundred hymns and songs in a “Songs of Praise” survey. That brought back a few memories!

There was no pause between songs. There wasn’t even a smooth chord sequence to get from one tune to the next.

A few people in front of me, and perhaps a few behind, lifted up one hand or two – but I am thoroughly convinced that we just sang songs. “We” might have worshipped, or “they” might have worshipped, but “I” sang songs – not for the want of trying to do something more than that.

My lips moved. My vocal chords moved. My hands moved as I clapped to one song, or tapped the side of my leg. My feet moved as I shuffled from one leg to the next in a very muted form of the Charismatic two step. I even stretched out a hand to heaven at one point. Anyone looking at me would have thought – “There’s a woman who is worshipping!”

Many things may have moved – but my spirit didn’t! I didn’t go anywhere. I don’t know, but if the person leading worship isn’t really going anywhere, does that mean that the people he or she is leading are not going anywhere either? Can I blame it on the worship team? Or does that not matter at all? Some people make the distiction between a worship leader and a lead worshipper - is that just semantics? If the lead worshipper isn't leading you then are you actually going anywhere?

I really don’t want to just sing songs! I want to connect. Worship isn’t worship at all if there is no encounter with God. i know what it feels like to connect and I know what it feels like when the connection is absent.

I read this Hebrews 4:14-16 this morning about worship. This is how the Message puts it:-

“Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let's not let it slip through our fingers. We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let's walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help. (Hebrews 4:14-16)”

On Thursday, I didn’t “walk right up to him” and get what He was so ready to give.

As I think about leading worship in our fellowship, I am challenged about whether I give people the opportunity, through my choice of songs and the way in which they are sung and played, or indeed anything else that I might say or do that creates the right atmosphere, to walk right up to Jesus and to get from Him what He is so ready to give.