Reverend Larry Gerber

Can you name that tune? The tune of someone else's life? What is the soundtrack for living?

If you think about that for a moment, you'll probably realize that there is more than one possible soundtrack for life. For some, it may be "Song Sung Blue" (Neil Diamond). For others, it may be "Troubles, Troubles, Troubles" (B.B. King). For still others, it might be "Rat Race" (Bob Marley) or "Living Inside Myself" (Gino Vannelli) or "Life's What You Make It" (Miley Cyrus) or "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" (ABBA).

The title given to songs usually depicts someones inner feelings or moods. Some song titles are an attempt to help one get past their down moods. And yet some songs are light and cheery. The songs that we remember are usually the songs that make us feel better about ourselves or help us to keep down and out and sorry for ourselves.

And, of course, there are many other possibilities. For the writer of the 40th psalm, the soundtrack at the beginning was probably "Nobody Knows the Troubles I've Seen." In the early verses in the psalm, he tells us that he was in desperate straits. He doesn't describe the circumstances, but it was some difficulty so deep that he portrayed it as a "desolate pit" and a "miry bog." But then he received the help of the Lord, and he experienced a transformation -- from the mire in the bottom of the pit to solid footing of rock up in the land of the living. At that point, the psalmist said, God "put a new song in my mouth."

God had enabled him to interpret life differently. The psalmist "changed his tune" because he found that the song in his heart was no longer a dirge but a hymn.

Granted, the psalmist lived centuries before Jesus came, but his statement about receiving a new song, a new soundtrack, is what Christianity is about. Christianity helps us to interpret life, whether in the midst of it or near its end, with a soundtrack that, if not always upbeat, at least has a joyous undertone.

Yet, not everybody likes to sing. Every pastor can tell you that. Because they stand up front facing the congregation during the hymns, they can spot the members who dutifully stand up with the rest when a hymn is announced, but then keep their mouths clamped firmly shut. And that's okay. Some of us are just not naturally inclined toward making music in the literal sense. And that is why you might not see my mouth moving sometimes. I sometimes don't sing because I need to listen, and sometimes I don't sing because I can't hit those notes and you would be glad I am not singing. There are times when one should not try to sing that tune. But as Christians, we have a soundtrack nonetheless. Listening to a soundtrack can be powerful as well. The soundtrack comes with ones faith. Hymns, and Christian songs, are meant to lift ones spirits, either by singing or by listening.

To get a sense of the soundtrack that fills your soul with the Holy Spirit, page through your hymnbook. What is that tune you are looking for? What page do you turn to and why. Why is that tune so meaningful, or comforting, or reassuring to you? In finding your favorite song you'll find pieces about some very heavy themes: sin, death, war, social ills, pain, personal troubles and similar topics. But when you sing or read those hymns, you find that they are written in the vocabulary of hope, confidence, redemption and spiritual affirmation.

Let's look at some of your favorite hymns. Do you have a number? What message is that song attempting to say to you? Why did you name that tune...?

Consider the well-known hymn, "How Firm a Foundation." It's all about difficulties and hard times. It talks about going through "deep waters," "rivers of woe" and "fiery trials," but it paraphrases Scripture in response, so that the words of the hymn are God's words. And God declares, in stanza after stanza, his abiding presence with us. The final verse says:

The soul that on Jesus still leans for repose,

I will not, I will not desert to its foes;

that soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,

I'll never, no, never, no, never forsake.

Those are strong words of encouragement and hope, and they also make up some of the lines of the soundtrack that come with our faith in Christ. They help to form the perspective from which Christians interpret life --- and death.

In that regard, we should remember that the psalms themselves are actually lyrics to the worship music of ancient Israel. Psalm 40 is filled not only with the mention of pits and bog, but also with testimony about God and the benefit to those who rely upon him. "Happy are those," sings the psalmist, "who make the LORD their trust."

In so saying, the psalmist is giving an interpretation of life. There is an old saying, "Suffering colors life, but we can choose the color," which is a way of talking about interpreting what happens to us.

But the Christian soundtrack goes beyond that. It proclaims that it's not we, but God who gives the color to life, and that color is not the blues.

Khalila Alldis joined the Santa Cruz, California, chapter of the Threshold Choir three years ago. The Threshold Choir is a group of singers who sing songs of comfort and peace to persons in hospice. Khalila tells her story of what happens when she joins her chapter of the Threshold Choir to bring comfort to others. She is 60 years old and struggles with back problems and chronic headaches, but she also lives with a larger emotional pain.

Fourteen years ago, her husband was murdered, and even though it happened that long ago, she still tears up when she talks about it. But when she goes to rehearse with the choir or sing with another member at the bedside of a person in the final hours of life, she hears again the larger soundtrack of her life.

She says, "I can be having a terrible day and come in and sing for 10 or 15 minutes and my whole perspective changes. It's just the best, quickest, most transformative high." She also speaks of how singing helped her after her husband was killed: "Twenty-two years we were together," she says. "I don't think I would have made it beyond that at all without being able to sing."

If you think about how soundtracks function in movies, you'll realize that as you get drawn into the drama and storyline being presented, the music seems to fade into the background. It's there, and it's contributing to the emotional feel of each scene, but you're not conscious of it. The same is true of the Christian soundtrack for living. We get involved in the drama of our daily lives and aren't usually conscious of the soundtrack beneath, but it comes to the surface in moments of need.

Consider the experience that Melik Kaylan, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, tells. He was born in Turkey but had attended an English boarding school where he'd learned hymns and Christmas carols during the morning chapel services. Later, as a grown man, he was visiting back in Turkey one December when he was involved in a serious car accident. His ribs were broken, several vital organs were damaged, and he was comatose and near death when he arrived at a hospital in Istanbul. The doctors saved his life, but he spent weeks in the ICU, delirious from fever much of the time.

Periodically, he came to consciousness long enough to realize that he'd been singing Christmas carols loudly enough for everyone to hear him. This was a real surprise to him because he thought he'd left all those songs, along with any religious interests, behind when he'd left the school. But there in the hospital, in his semiconscious state, the carols came back. He says that "an inner Wurlitzer-full of them came welling up" as he emerged from anesthetic, and they continued throughout his stay.

On one occasion, his fever spiked so high that a nurse placed an ice bag on his head. As he slowly became conscious of his surroundings, he noticed two other patients nearby, both middle-aged men with their heads bandaged. With the three of them all being crowned with dressings or ice bags, he discovered himself singing "We Three Kings of Orient Are." Later, when a patient recovered enough to leave, "Away in a Manger" sprung from his lips unbidden.

And so it went. Later, recovered, Kaylan looked back and wrote:

... the carols ... purged and simplified my thoughts, helped me surrender to the healing process while surrendering to the carol's own inner metronome. Carols have the knack of transporting you back to the first moments you ever sang them, which tend to be times of optimism and wonder at the universe -- exactly the outlook needed, in such situations, to resurrect yourself successfully, without killing yourself in the process.

The soundtrack that comes with our faith in Christ is not always up-tempo. It reflects both the hills and the valleys of life. But it's also a soundtrack for all of our days -- including our time of active living, our final days and our time beyond time in the great beyond.

It's not that those without faith have no soundtrack at all. As I have already suggested, there are other music lines out there. Even aggressive unbelievers have their interpretations of life, although we doubt their soundtracks have much in the way of a last stanza.

But consider that in the vision of the world to come, as recorded in Revelation, John of Patmos sees the faithful gathered around the throne of God and doing what? Singing the song of the Lamb of God (Revelation 15:3) -- new verses to the music line they learned in this world when they met Christ.

Once God puts that new song in our mouths, the soundtrack is always there. And whether we are consciously hearing it or not, and no matter what our present difficulties, it's singing to us of hope, confidence, redemption and spiritual affirmation.

Listen to the words as we sing our closing hymn...

Sources:

Kaylan, Melik. "Carols for convalescence." The Wall Street Journal, December 22, 2000.

Threshold Choir Web Site, thresholdchoir.org.