The Power of Music

By this time of the year, most ward choirs are preparing Christmas music to sing in December. I have been singing with my ward's choir over the past few weeks, and I have always left the rehearsal feeling uplifted. Music has great power and can help lift us closer to God.

In old times, music was very important to people in their worship of God. In the Old Testament we read:
"O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation"
(Psalm 95:1).

In these last days, the Lord commanded Emma Smith to make a "selection of sacred hymns." Following this commandment, the Lord declared,
"For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads"(D&C 25:12).
We have had a tradition of keeping a hymnal ever since then. In fact, the Church is currently in the process of producing an updated version of the hymnbook.

While I was serving on my mission, my dad wrote a Christmas poem that he sent to me. It is about the story of the angels who announced the birth of Christ to the shepherds, and why they were singing. His friend who writes music composed an organ accompaniment for the poem. My ward choir is preparing to sing this arrangement for Christmas this year. To my knowledge, it has not been sung before with the organ accompaniment. I have included a synthesized recording of the organ music as part of this post so that those in the choir with me can practice before we sing it in December.

Link (mp3)
Copyright 2014 Jerry James and Chad Staten
No redistribution

I hope you enjoy this fantastic music, and have a great holiday season.

Comments

Mothers Day 2023

A couple of weeks ago on Mother's Day, I gave a talk in church about how women in the scriptures exemplify attributes of Jesus Christ. I'd like to share it here so we all can appreciate together the great examples of righteousness we have in the scriptures. In church I had to shorten my talk somewhat, so you could consider the version here the "Director's Cut" :) Growing up I was grateful for my mom, for the same reasons that many young people are - she drove me to school, cooked dinner, and did the laundry. But there's a lot more to motherhood than doing chores, which I've been learning about in the past few years as I've watched my wife raise our 2 daughters. She sacrifices so much of her free time and personal desires for the benefit of our kids. I am continually in awe of her selflessness, and will be forever grateful for her. I was asked to speak about "Christlike Attributes shown by women in the scriptures". With it being Mother...

"What Is Truth?"

I recently watched a video where science nerd Kyle Hill responded to the various social media conspiracies that have been popping up about the "fake snow" in Texas. Although I expected him to call them silly, foolish, or something worse, I was surprised when he instead talked about a more serious topic he calls the “information apocalypse.” Beyond being a good example of avoiding name-calling, it was an interesting discussion about information, truth, and our responsibilities as citizens of the world (13:00-17:20). We are indeed living in a time where there is so much information available, it can be hard to tell what is true and what isn’t. Some, like Pontius Pilate, may believe that it is not possible to determine the truth. He expressed this, perhaps cynically, perhaps dejectedly, when he asked Jesus, “What is truth?” ( John 18:38 ). Others may believe that there is no truth that applies to everyone. I believe that there are some facts which are always t...

The Sword of the Lord

I am a big fan of swords. My favorite kind of sword (currently) is the Japanese Katana . I also really like the Bolo swords of the Philippines. Today, however, I will be talking about how swords are used in the scriptures, both literally and figuratively. Captain Moroni, as depicted in " Firm in the Faith of Christ " Heavenly Swords Chronologically, the first sword mentioned in the scriptures appears when Adam and Eve are kicked out of the Garden of Eden: "So I [God] drove out the man, and I placed at the east of the Garden of Eden, cherubim and a flaming sword, which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life" ( Moses 4:31 ). I have always wondered, did the angel actually have a sword, or is this verse a metaphor to emphasize the power that the angel had? Isaiah certainly uses metaphorical descriptions of angels. In either case, I think whatever the angel looked like, it was clear to anyone approaching the tree of life that continuing would be a dang...

Gospel Cogitations

Search This Blog