Soul Music

Music is what feelings sound like. ~Unknown

There are many music types that stir me, notes that get my heart pumping, rhythms that cause my body to sway, lyrics that touch my heart, riffs that send my body into dance. I love music, love listening to the sultry voice of the indomitable Billie Holiday to the staccato vocals of Linkin Park to the screaming words of Van Halen and his heavy metal contemporaries. I love listening to the heavily orchestrated pieces associated with Classical like Beethoven's glorious 9th symphony and the seeming randomness of the Dead Kennedy's Holiday in Cambodia. I love most genres of music; Big Band, Classical, Pop, Punk, New Wave, Celtic, Rock, Alternative, Blue Grass, and many more. Truth be told, there are even times when the music that best addresses my mood is country. However, there is only one music type that feeds my soul, touches the part of me that longs to commune with my maker. That genre is Christian Worship music particularly when I am part of the gathering that is doing the singing.

I enjoy being in the big arenas with 10,000 fans listening to our musical hero's live, dancing to the songs that have help define my life. As great as that experience is, it doesn't compare to worship music when I am in the crowd. I feel most connected to God spiritually and emotionally when I am with 100s of other like minded individuals and we are all lifting our voices in thankful praise to the One that created us. At that time, music pours forth from the soul through the heart. It is the heart that is singing, it is the soul that is expressing a level of emotion I don't find in any other musical setting.

I believe each of us has a God shaped hole in our heart, a hole we seek to fill with the objects of the world, toys and gadgets and sex. The substitutes fail miserably, fail to bring us true satisfaction because it is a hole that only God can fill, a hole God put there to help draw us to his loving arms. It is during the singing of worship music in a community of believers when I believe we catch a glimpse of how we will feel when we fully embrace God. At that time, in that musical interlude, we, all of us in the service, achieve a phenomenon wherein we are all interconnected and connected to God. In that glorious moment all our cares, our burdens are taken by God leaving us unencumbered in His presence, fully free to feel His magnificent love for us. I believe that is an approximation of heaven, a glimpse of how we will feel for eternity when we dwell fully in the presence of God and are forever expressing our love to God through our soul music.