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🎵 ”Go tell it on a mountain, over the hills and everywhere.” 🎵 ”Angels we have heard on high
Sweetly singing o'er the plains And the mountains in reply Echoing their joyous strains
Gloria, in excelsis Deo
Gloria, in excelsis Deo!”
This time of the year is extra special when it comes to singing praises to God. I love singing Christmas songs that remind us of God’s tremendous love for us. A love that is so great that God the Father sent His Son Jesus to come to this earth, somehow being fully God and fully man, to show us what God is really like. Oh yeah, and to offer salvation to all who place their faith in Him to save them. Every time that we reflect on God’s love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness that He shows us, we should naturally want to sing and shout praises to Him who is worthy of our praise and our worship.
Robert Tuttle cannot sing praises to God out loud or even actually finish any song that he begins. You see, Robert is a patient that I visit as I make my visitations as a Hospice volunteer. Robert has suffered with severe seizures from the day he was born. He has never been able to have a job or even experienced what most of us would call a “normal” life. It is an awful and painstakingly long event that Robert must go through to form even a very simple word and expel it out for someone to hear. On my last visit with Robert, he went through the agonizing process of talking to me and this time it was deeply painful for both Robert and I. He told me that his grandma had raised him from a very young age. When I asked why this was so, his mouth very slowly and with the usual prolonged stuttering pushed out “mmmmmmmmmy mmmmmmmmom ddddddied wwwwwwhen I wwwwwas tttttthree. I expressed how sorry I was to hear this and then instantly had one of those moments when God reminds his children, (me specifically in this case) just how much you really have been blessed, just how good you really have it, and that you need to be way more thankful for what God has blessed you with. There are many people in this world that have it way worse than the life situation God has placed you in. I am not minimizing or making light of anyone’s suffering, I am only taking this opportunity to remind each of us to be thankful that we have a voice to sing praises to God. As you are being thankful, use that voice to “Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth; Break forth in song, rejoice, and sing praises" as Psalms 98:4 tells us to do. Remember that we have many reasons to sing with gratitude to the Lord every time we wake up to a new day filled with grace and mercy. My prayer today is that you who are reading this and I who am writing this will closely follow Paul’s word to the Colossians from chapter 3 verse 16: “Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.”
In Christ,
Pastor Allen
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