Woke up this bright day with a song in my soul but no discernible ditty to wrap it around. It’s a minor frustration but a nagging one – trying to pair the mood of the morning with some just-right piece from the mind’s melodic portfolio. One’s subconscious goes a-thumbing through the files, and it’s often odd and unpredictable what emerges from the foraging.
I had just located the right degree of heat for the shower when my memory popped out a real surprise: “The Sound Of Music.” Not the whole soundtrack, just that famous title tune … and while my voice gave it a warm run-through, other portions of my brain cast a line into recent memory, fishing for what might have prompted that particular choice.
Haven’t seen the movie in ages. Haven’t heard the song in at least as long. Haven’t heard any references to either one in conversation or on the old movie stations. Nothing I recall from my busy dreams of the last few nights had anything to do with curtain-dressed children or warbling nuns or even those tone-deaf Nazi sympathizers.
Yet here I was, scaling the lyrical hills with Julie Andrews. (Allowing for the vocal enhancements of steam, soap, and tile, I can modestly say I did credit by her example.)
Was still vaguely humming the tune when I sat down to my laptop for the morning traffic. First up was a Bible verse, kindly emailed each day by my employers. And, lo, what should today’s chosen passage be but Isaiah 49:13:
"Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted."
In other words, the prophet suggests, “the hills are alive with the sound of music.”
Huh.
Only One in all of creation knew both the tuneful impulse of my heart and the designated Bible verse set for my meditation this morning. And He took some care, not only to align them, but to call my attention to the alignment. To what end, then, all this coincidence?
I‘m not planning any jaunty forays into high places for the foreseeable future. And I‘m poor company for the von Trapps, since I‘m way past 16 going on 17, far from the lonely goatherds, and out of condition for climbing any – much less every – mountain. So, if there’s a serendipity to the synchronicity, I fear I remain none the Edelweisser.
That leaves me with naught but the lyrics themselves to muse on.
Curious, how our minds fixate. I’d been to "Yellowstone" National Park twice before I realized I never saw a blond boulder in the whole grand place. I’d just always absorbed the name without thinking where it might have come from. I‘ve heard the term “dead as a doornail” my whole life, and only recently paused to ponder what a “doornail” is, looks like, or has to do with doom.
We do these things all the time – forge our mental shortcuts and set them in concrete – especially with songs. Singing “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing” at a Christmas Eve service last week, I realized how little thought I‘ve ever given to some of the words:
“Joyful all ye nations rise / Join the triumph of the skies” – that’s a picture. Every person, in every country on earth, rising in unison to join the angels’ song. “The triumph of the skies.” Triumph … over what, exactly? Sin? Evil? Human folly?
“Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace! / Hail the Sun of Righteousness!” “Heaven-born” – not Bethlehem? The “Sun” – not “Son” – of Righteousness? “By His light, we see light,” the Psalmist assures us … and by His light, we see “right,” too.
And so it goes. I learned the song back in eighth grade chorus, but I hear “The Sound Of Music” now, and my mind instantly leaps ahead to Julie spinning in that high mountain meadow, then on to the nuns and the children and the serenading of Salzburg. I have to make myself pause and back up for the actual lyrics … and when I do, it’s to marvel at the wistful inspiration – the near-psalm – breathed into writer Oscar Hammerstein’s searching soul.
“The hills are alive with the sound of music / With songs they have sung for a thousand years.”
Long, long before I lived, nature in all its myriad dimensions was singing the praises of its Creator … and will continue singing them, long after ‘m gone.
“The hills fill my heart with the sound of music / My heart wants to sing every song it hears.”
Instinctively, my soul yearns to absorb that wisdom of the ages, and join in that joyful worship.
“My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees –
My heart wants to sigh like the chime that flies from a church on a breeze –
To laugh, like a brook, as it trips and falls over stones on its way –
To sing through the night, like a lark who is learning to pray.”
An album of quiet emotions – a gentle survey of the varied longings of the human heart. And then, a firm assertion of hope:
“I go to the hills when my heart is lonely
I know I will hear what I’ve heard before
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music
And I’ll sing once more.”
Our souls ache for such timeless themes … the stuff of life itself. And rejoice to find that the sweet, enduring music – the voice of our loving Father – is waiting to whisper what we long to know.
At the quiet end of what has been, for so many, an often dark and wounding year, may our souls hear again, in the annum coming on, soft strains of the old, best songs. The love and truth that sometimes elude our memory, but are always as near as a bird’s bright song … the wash of the sea on a sunset shore … the gentle stir of the wind in the bobbing leaves.
May the Lord, indeed, comfort his people, and shower His compassion on His afflicted. Peace and joy to you, and a heart filled with the sound of His music.
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