Songs of Praise

At church today I sat alongside a couple during the Coffee Morning who had come for the first time to the U3A choir.  It was a mother and daughter and the older lady told me she hadn’t sung for over twenty years so this morning she was rediscovering her vocal chords. 

I’ve loved singing for as long as I can remember.  Maybe it’s in the family as both my grandfathers were boy choristers, one at Christ Church, Chorleywood, the other at St Mary’s, Rickmansworth.

Whilst growing up a friend and I regularly sang at our town’s ‘Religious Festival’ and for a few years we wiped the board in the duet section!!!

A few years ago some of us from AFC went along to the Big Chorus Messiah at The Royal Albert Hall, an evening when the choir consists of 3,000 and the audience of 2,000!  Singing alongside about 500 bases (who had all sang Messiah a hundred times before) was a wonderful experience!

Last week some of us from church led a service of worship in a local residential home.  Once again, a mother and daughter were present.  At the end of the service, which included four hymns, the daughter told me that her mother, a resident who has basically lost the use of speech when it comes to conversing, sang every line of every hymn from memory.  She told me that with tears in her eyes – for her it was a very precious moment to realise just how much these much-loved hymns meant to her mum.

Music goes deep – and even deeper still when combined with words of faith.  And perhaps for those of us in the non-conformist tradition with our lack of creeds, it’s our hymns which contain the truths which have, over hundreds of years, fashioned our faith.

So this Sunday, as every week,  I’m looking forward to singing the faith with my fellow worshippers – in fact I simply couldn’t imagine morning worship without music and songs of praise!