My sister lives in Houston and last Sunday night she was near NRG Stadium as the concert from the 2024 Rolling Stones tour was ending and the faithful rockers were heading back to their cars and trucks. She said it looked more like an AARP convention than a rock concert, with many walkers, canes, and grey heads, still wearing their signature “red tongue” logo t shirts. This is not intended to make fun because she and I are from that same generation. It shows how dedicated people can be to “their music” even with Mick and the boys (three left) in their 80’s now. The word on the street is, they still put on quite a show. Of course, Willie Nelson is still touring, and that herbal scented bus will be going to Texas next week. The “Red Headed Stranger” is now 92. Dolly Parton released a recent album “Deluxe Rockstar” at age 78 and the remaining “Eagles” are gearing up for a new nationwide tour.
Music can be such a big influence in our lives. Like those going to vintage concerts, it can bring us back to younger days when life seemed so full of choices and possibilities. It can transport us back to when we met our spouses and evoke those giddy feelings of love and romance. It can sooth our heartaches or help us make sense of a crazy and harmful world.
Do you know that there is a songbook located right in the middle of your Bible? Sometimes we forget that “Psalms” are, in fact, songs. This is the songbook of the ancient Hebrew people. In fact you can easily find these set to music and sung in the original Hebrew or in our English tongue. Of course, some of these Psalms have been set to famous classical arrangements like “The Heavens Are Telling” by Franz Joesph Hyden based on Psalm 19. So many have set Psalm 23 to music in many styles. In more contemporary music, “The Majesty and Glory of Your Name” is based on Psalm 8.
So, start your day or end your day with a song from the Psalms. Try to imagine a tune. They express the full range of human emotion from joy and celebration, to wonder at the majesty of our Creator, to the honest anxiety of living in a fallen world. There is something waiting for you in those pages!
(Steve Berger is pastor of First Methodist Church Minden, a Global Methodist Church. He is the husband of Dianne, his partner in ministry, they have two adult sons, a dachshund, and love living in Minden.)