Singers…How precious is the act of singing…what a wonder to sing.

“That old man living at the cheap hotel, who is he? He is always looking in that scrapbook. They say he used to be a singer.” 

“The young kid who is so full of dreams, auditioning everywhere, cocky, nervous, but sure of himself. He says he’s a singer…..”

My mind and heart go back through the years to the great singers that have graced this planet with their voices. When they were in their prime, singing in the grand opera houses of the day, they seemed immortal. What an occasion it was when time swept them away from us and brought new names, new voices. The river of life brought them and swept them away.  I have lost special friends over these past few years, friends with voices which were immortal, though their time on earth was short. How I miss them though I know they live on. How I miss my dear friend, tenor James McCracken. I cannot believe that he is no longer on this earth. His voice will not leave my ear nor his soul leave my heart. Then there is my dearest friend, mentor and supporter, Jerome Hines. Jerry left this planet Feb. 4^th 2003. What a hole he left when he departed. What a job well done he did while with us. I miss him so. The river brought him and carried him away.

Singers. How I love singers. They play the most beautiful of all instruments on the strings of a human nervous system. They paint sound on the canvas of the human heart. If you are not a singer you cannot know what it feels like to create a painting of sound knowing that it will never be retained except in human memory. What painter would willingly give time and attention to create a masterpiece on canvas only to erase it as soon as it were finished? But singers must do just that. No song, no aria, no scene, is ever the same twice. Even though we have the recording devices, a recording is to the real song out of the singer’s mouth, as a picture of a rose is to the experience of roses lovingly picked by one’s beloved and brought with arms of adoration and blessing!  A CD is a picture of a Rembrandt in a book, not the life-transforming experience of seeing Rembrandt for the first time.  Does anybody know the difference anymore in our cardboard society? Singers do! How I love singers. I am a singer. My experience of singing has totally captured my life. Singers come to me now and ask for my help in freeing their voices from the confinements of their bodies. I love the honor of the task.

The ongoing saga of human life is, at it were, a long song that continues to be sung. Listen. You can hear the song. Take a quiet moment and open the family history album. Look at the lives that have come to this Earth, and have gone. Don’t think of them as just cardboard characters from the “past.” They strove too with ambition like you. They too faced trials and hardships. They overcame great obstacles just to continue to live. They raised children that they loved and doted on their grandchildren. They lived their lives in common dignity and then passed from this Earth. Their experience here sounded just a note, but a powerful note of the song. Their coming and passing might be sad were it not for the note they added to the song. For you see we have almost forgotten the song that is being sung. God is a Singer. When He created all things, He sang them into existence. Every life that has ever lived, every tree that has ever grown, every flower that has ever blossomed has come from that Song and still carries a little hint of melody deep within it.  You come from that Song. Every singer but reminds us of the one song of life that comes from God’s heart. But songs have words as well as melodies, and so The Gospel of John sings for us, “In the beginning was The Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld His glory, glory as of the unique One from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

It is the “Song,” you see. Formally it was sung here by the Greek-speaking disciples of Jesus. The Song is like that. It is so strong that it turns itself into formal music. We are all singers. You must see that. Some of us just sing more than others and in so doing we allow the Song to sing to itself!

A gospel song sings about “When all of God’s singers get Home, there’ll be no place like heaven my home, when all of God’s singers get home.”

I love singers. They tell me of a time coming when all of God’s singers will get Home. I know that hasn’t happened yet in time, but somehow I feel it already, just a little. Eternity is like that. It breaks in on time and gives us a foretaste of things to come. I feel it when my singers come together as a group to sing. I feel it when their lives touch mine and we are woven together in threads of melody given to all God’s singers. What a time that will be, “When all of God’s singers get Home.”  The Singer of Eternity will join with his singers. What a song we will sing!  The gospel song writer, Gloria Gaither, put it this way: “One of these days He’ll gather all of His children home and one by one the singers of all the ages will lift their voices and fill in the parts life taught to them. At last we will hear love’s sweetest song as it was first conceived in the heart of the Great Song Writer Himself. And it will be perfect. What music there will be when the song of all the ages is sung around the Father’s Throne, when all of God’s singers get home.”

Until then, time marches on. Lives are born here with the song of the creator in their very genes. Lives come and lives go. When you hear the song, how can you not sing? 

Come singers! Come! Sing! Sing and awaken creation to the Song that made all things.