Already on the Breeze

It was a perfect summer day. The sun hadn't climbed high enough yet to punish anyone for standing outside. We'd gathered around the grave to lay a loved one to rest, the way we do, everyone in their place, the liturgy moving the way it always moves. We prayed the Lord's Prayer together, like we always do. 

And then someone's voice found the silence and filled it. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. Thin at first, almost hesitant, like it surprised even the person singing it. Then another voice found it. Then another, until the whole graveside was carrying it together. Nobody had planned it. Nobody had a bulletin telling them to sing, and nobody needed one. The words were just there, already on the breeze, because someone had put them there years earlier, one Sunday at a time. 

We don't just sing our faith. We are formed by what we sing. 

I've seen it at Mill Pond too. I'd left the lyric sheets behind, forgotten on my desk at the office, and stood in front of a room of folk with nothing planned in my hands. So, I set the planned hymns aside and did the only thing I could do: "This Little Light of Mine." "Jesus Loves Me." "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands."

Nobody needed a sheet. Nobody needed a hymn number. After all these years, the hymns are still there. 

I've seen the same thing in hospital rooms. Memory fails everywhere except the hymn. We sing these songs at weddings and funerals, in joy and in grief we have no other words for. Over years, they stop being songs we perform and become the language we pray in. 

That's not a small thing. That's formation. 

The sermon proclaims. The Scriptures read. The Sacraments give grace we could never generate ourselves. And the hymns place the faith on our lips, Sunday after Sunday, until what we've been singing settles into what we actually believe. A hymn doesn't just describe a doctrine. It puts the doctrine in our mouths and asks us to say it out loud, together, whether or not we feel it that day. Often it's the singing that carries us until belief catches back up. 

What we sing matters. Not for taste, not for nostalgia. It matters because every Sunday the Church is teaching us who God is, and in singing, we're learning it together. 

We don't just sing what we believe. Week after week, we learn to believe what we sing. 

Peace
Travis Segar
Pastor for Care and Community​