One of my favorite novelists, Wendell Berry, is also a poet. In one poem he reflects on life as he sits in a cemetery. It begins, The valley holds its shadow. My loves lie round me in the dark. There, in that dark valley of graves he considers where his life is going. Then, in the last stanza he says.
Sitting among the bluebells
in my sorrow, for lost time
and the never forgotten dead,
I saw a hummingbird stand
in air to drink from flowers.
It was a kiss he took and gave.
At his lightness and the ardor
of his throat, the song I live by
stirred my mind. I said;
"By sweetness alone it survives.*
What is the song we live by?
A praise song that I really like, one that we sometimes sing in our worship, is titled "10,000 Reasons." Do you remember this part?
The sun comes up, its a new day dawning.
Its time to sing your song again.
Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me,
Let me be singing when the evening comes.
But what is our song? And what is it about? The world has a lot of songs to offer. There is the seductive melody of materialism. There is the exciting anthem of applause and fame. There is the blood-stirring drumbeat of conflict, competition and war. But those songs have no hope in them. Their promises are empty ad those who sing them end up singing the blues.
What is the song that the people of God have always sung? We can hear it after the Lord saved Israel from the Egyptians when Moses and the people sang:
I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
the horse and the rider he has thrown into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation" (Exod 15:1-2)
When Isaiah looked down the long corridor of time and saw the Messiah coming he said, You will say in that day, ... behold, God is my salvation. I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation" (Isa 12:1-2).
What is our song? Certainly one expression of it comes from John's vision of the Lamb, standing as if slain, and he reports in Revelation 5:9, "they sang a new song, saying, 'Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.'"
The Lord's Supper reminds us that the song of our life is one of praise for the Lamb who has given us redemption and victory over evil and the forces of evil. And so we go from this table, saying with the song writer,
The sun comes up, its a new day dawning.
Its time to sing your song again.
Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me,
let me be singing when the evening comes.
