Praying Twice

Last night as I drove home late from work I was listening, as usual, to Christian radio. I love to drive at night; I always feel as if the darkness is covering the car like a peaceful blanket, hushing the noises of a busy day into gentle stillness. Many things were on my mind as I drove home, and my mind was racing through them as fast as my tires were going on the parkway. And then one song began on the radio, a well-beloved song of praise; and my heart began to melt.

Now I have no pretence that I possess a decent singing voice; I am barely able to carry a tune "in a basket", as my grandmother once told me, and this Sunday at mass I was amused to find the little girl in front of me looking over her shoulder at me while singing quite a few times. However, I still love to sing, and sing often (although usually alone)!

Why? Because, as one of my ten reasons noted, that music as an art form is capable of expressing the unexpressable, of taking your heart and soul and sending it floating as an offering up to God, without your needing to find the words to explain what your heart wants to tell Him. Music bypasses that side of the brain and washes over your emotions until they spill out into the song. What God wanted that night was my heart, not my analysis of every situation to find the proper words for intercession. God already knows what I need, far better than I do; what I need to do is to love Him first and foremost, and to tell Him that, often. Not because He needs to hear it, but because I need to say it. And to hear myself say it, and to feel in my heart all that love for my Creator. Singing purges all of these emotions, and lets my soul experience again the love I have for God and the love He has for me. And so I sing, loud and with much gusto, music perhaps only my God can appreciate , because He made the instrument to praise Him in the first place.

It was St. Augustine who said, "He who sings prays twice." Let us teach our children to sing, and to sing well, for the glory of God.

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