[This the final offering of “The Antiphonal Song”… You might want to read the first five to get the whole picture… or go to the one stop shop of it…]
When the audience turns its back…
“But I tell you, love your enemies…” Matthew 5:44
We’re supposed to love the way he loves and love everyone he loves, even those we don’t want to love. The love song we repeat back to him has to be sung even to those who don’t want to be sung to. It’s always more difficult to sing when the audience has turned its back. But most with their backs turned haven’t heard the song as it’s supposed to be sung. And that’s a shame on us who have failed to sing it right, in appropriate harmony with one another. Until we do that, we haven’t properly represented the Song Giver or his song.
Singing to skeptics and music haters isn’t nearly as easy as our Sunday-songfest-singing with our fellow choir members. Thankfully the Song Giver camouflages evocative stanzas of his song in his created world and in the consciences of all persons at birth. But the form of his ballad most difficult to reject is when enamored songsters croon it in unison to hostile audiences.
When we were his enemies his love broke us down and the appeal of his choir reduced our resistance to powder. Our song does the same with our enemies.
“Love comes from God…” 1 John 4:7
“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in him.” 1 John 4:16
“O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise.” Psalm 51:15
While there is discipline and practice involved in singing a song in patent harmony, and even this song of God – because of our spoiled nature – is difficult to learn, the Beloved Singer himself lives in us, singing through us. Even the song back to him he inspires and empowers. Sometimes it seems that I’m singing in a cooperative lip sync. That’s how much help I need.
We’ll never sing the song as well as he does, but we’re improving.
barney wiget 