Merging is a New Journey - Anticipation and Hope of What is to Come (Musically)

Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp!  Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!  Praise him with clanging cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!  Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!  Praise the Lord!  -Psalm 150:3-6 (NRSV)

  

Just the sun while out one day...

When I started this week, I fully expected to NOT have an installment of the "Merging is a New Journey" series.  First, I have already started to collect my writings for my full "booklet" or whatever I am going to call it so anything else I write I have to remember to add in.  Second, well, nothing really exciting happened so I figured, okay, I won't write for this series this week.

But then I was listening to a playlist in my car on the way to work.  One of the songs, a little early for some people, was an organ rendition of "O Come All Ye Faithful."  The power of the music gave me inspiration for a new thought in this series.  So, yes, now I am writing something.

As I listened to "O Come All Ye Faithful" and other organ tunes in my playlist, I was suddenly overcome with great anticipation and hope for the coming church seasons and the songs to be heard either live or online played on the PUMC organ.  I have to say, we have THE BEST organ players at PUMC.  Sure, everyone probably says that about their own church organists.  But I have been truly blessed by the music I have heard.  So, I all of a sudden, got this excited feeling about hearing Advent and Christmas hymns.  At tempo!  With the joy those songs should have!

But it got worse.  Because in the same playlist I have multiple versions of All Hail the Power of Jesus Name (Diadem version), which I have come to realize is like the song I feel connects me most to God.  So then I got to thinking about all the songs I love during Lent and on Palm Sunday and on Easter and how they would sound on the organ at church.

It may seem like I am rushing the church seasons, so says the seasonally confused individual, but I choose to view it as anticipation and hope of what is to come.  Every week I am blessed by being able to praise God through music.  I may not be able to sing each week, due to COVID restrictions.  But hearing music and singing songs in my head has come to be the way I am able to praise God.

So from the music perspective, I wait with great anticipation and hope to hear familiar songs and unfamiliar ones and to continue to be joyful in my praise through words and prayer and Scripture and music.