Some time ago a friend sent me a lovely card. Sketched in pencil there's an image of a bird perched securely on a twig, beak open and lifted to the skies. A Chinese proverb reads: “A bird does not sing because it has an answer, but because it has a song.” I've attached it to the ledge on the shelf above my keyboard.
The power of a song, be it that of a robin, sparrow, loon or one of the 10,000 bird species in the world, is impossible to express in mere words. Then, there is the unsurpassed loveliness of a hurting piece of humanity who refuses to stop singing no matter the ferocity of his or her circumstances.
The truth of that statement was stamped on my heart this week while attending a symphonic concert of music marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Holland from the Nazis. Just imagine this: Rudolf Karel wrote Nonet in 1945 while imprisoned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp; Olivier Messiaen wrote his Quatuor pur la Fin du Temps in 1941 while imprisoned in a German prisoner-of-war camp. (Not only that, three other imprisoned musicians played his music in the night, after spending the day in hellish conditions.) These men were just two of the many who refused to quit making music even though they faced a certain death.
"For these laws of yours have been my source of joy and singing through all these years of my earthly pilgrimage." Psalm 119:54 (Living Bible)
While most of us will be spared a martyr's death, life gives us abundant opportunity to sing, not because there are answers, but because He gives us a song. No matter what I, or you, are facing today, may we reach deep into the recesses of our souls and sing a song!
