The Power of a Song

Most of us engaged in church music, whether it be directing, playing, singing in the choir, leading children, or singing hymns in the pews, occasionally get a glimpse of the power and potential of music to form and transform lives. We know that music has the ability to move, to provoke, to soothe and calm, and to teach. It is that capacity in music that led to statements such as these:

  • "In order to take the spiritual temperature of an individual or society, one must mark the music" (Plato).
  • "Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful" (Socrates).
  • "He who sings, prays twice" (often attributed to Augustine of Hippo, ca. 430).
  • "I am not ashamed to confess publicly that next to theology there is no art which is the equal of music, for she alone, after theology, can do what otherwise only theology can accomplish, namely, quiet and cheer up the soul of man, which is clear evidence that the devil, the originator of depressing worries and troubled thoughts, flees from the voice of music just as he flees from the words of theology" (Martin Luther, 1530).
  • "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak" (William Congreve, 1670-1729).

God told Moses at the end of the wilderness wanderings that soon he would die, that Joshua, not he, would lead the people into the Promised Land. God told Moses that "soon the people will begin to prostitute themselves to the foreign gods in their midst . . . they will forsake me, breaking my covenant . . . ." God said, "I will hide my face from them" and "they will say 'God is not in our midst.'"

And what does God tell Moses to do? Pray? Preach? Prophesy? Warn the people? No, God told him, "'Now write down for yourselves this song and teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it, so that it may be a witness for me against them. When I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, the land I promised on oath to their forefathers, and when they eat their fill and thrive, they will turn to other gods and worship them, rejecting me and breaking my covenant. And when many disasters and difficulties come upon them, this song will testify against them, because it will not be forgotten by their descendants. I know what they are disposed to do, even before I bring them into the land I promised them on oath.' So Moses wrote down this song that day and taught it to the Israelites." (Deuteronomy 31:16ff, NIV)

For their time of great distress, God provided the people through Moses, not a sermon or a prayer, not a speech or a reproach, but a song. And we, those who practice music in the church, are the heirs of that tradition. We are the inheritors of the power of a song. It is not a trifling matter to select our hymns for worship, to accompany them, to lead them, and certainly to sing them. We are engaged in nothing less than the formation and transformation of a person, the saving of a soul, the healing of a body, the teaching of a mind, the renewing of a spirit. If there ever was a time to use that terribly overused adjective "awesome," it is now.


Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

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