Sing a new song of praise to him; play skillfully on the harp, and sing with joy. (Psalm 33:3)I’m listening to a jazz record of spiritual songs put to jazz beat.
The first few times I heard it, I kept thinking that it sounded like a couple of kids had been sitting through boring church song services and were thinking "We could do better than that."”
Then when they became adults, they did a jazz record of those same songs. What a neat thought.
The psalmist says, Sing a new song of praise to him. In fact, he uses that same idea six more times. With all of the emphasis on new in the Bible, one wonders why so many insist on singing and playing the same old music to God.
Listening to these young men playing makes me think that there are so many new things we could do for God, if we could get out of the old.
When we ran a coffeehouse in Kansas City, it amazed me at the number of young people in little Christian rock and roll bands who just wanted to give something new to the Lord.
It also amazed me at the number of people in churches who just wanted to stop them.
For some reason, people have always wanted to stop new things. Maybe it is the fear of the new, or the desire for people just to let stuff alone.
Wycliffe was killed in the fourteenth century for making a new Bible, Galileo was censured in the sixteenth century for making a new observation on the universe, the Hugenots were castigated for a new vision, Americans were killed for trying to make a new country based on a new thought: freedom of religion, William Booth, who founded the salvation Army, was condemned for bringing the gospel to the streets using modern music.
Wesley, Campbell, Knox, all these people were doing nothing more than bringing something new to the world in the name of the Lord. Yet they had a lot of enemies.
New is not necessarily bad. If the Bible condemns it, that is one thing. However, just because it is new doesn’t mean it is bad.
Give the new a chance. After all, if God likes it, you might want to rethink it yourself.
