Gad Gave the Song

Part One -- When I was growing up, . . .
Part Two -- . . . Lend Me Your Ear An ULTRA-SONIC SPIRITUALITY
Part Three -- This is My Story, This is My Song
Part Four -- HEARING AND HEALING
Part Five -- God Gave the Song
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God Gave the Song

There is a name I love to hear,
I love to sing its worth;
It sounds like music in my ear
The sweetest name on earth.
Frederick Whitfield (1855)

Welsh English physician Ernest Lloyd used to lecture his students in the mysteries of the heart. He would crescendo the heart's wonders until he dropped to a whisper: "Have you ever heard a mitral murmur, boys, have you? It's like the wind rustling through the golden corn. You think I'm being poetic? Why, when you listen with your stethoscope to the old heart, boys, you are listening to a kind of poetry."⁷⁰

That old Welsh doctor didn't know how right he was. Scientists have been debating what the next advance in biometrics beyond "fingerprints" would be. Some argue for face recognition; others hand geometry and signature verification. The most popular candidate, however, has been "soundprints" -- human "sound pictures" (sonograms) made by a computer breaking your voice down into intervals a thousandth of a second long, each interval containing thousands of frequencies of sound, which the computer lays out on a graph that generates your unique "soundprint." Researchers at Beth Isrtael Hospital in Boston have taken "soundprints" one step better. They have discovered that every heartbeat gives off certain frequencies that are totally unique. These frequencies create a patter of sound that is uniquely yours, and it goes by the name of "Heart Songs." One of these researches has hired a composer to put his own "heart song" into syhmphonic form.

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There's within my Heart a Melody
Jesus whispers sweet and low:
Fear not, I am with thee, peace, be still
In all of life's ebb and flow.
Luther B. Bridgers, 1910

In 1998 Mikhail Baryshnikov gave an unpredecented solo ballet performance. "An Evening of Music and Dance" featured "HeartBeat:mb," an improvisation to his own heart song amplified through a wireless device affixed to his shirtless chest.

Or in the words of the Gypsy Smith 1907 rivival campaign theme song,

There is never a day so dreary,
There is never a night so long,
But the soul that is trusting in Jesus
Will somewhere find a song.
Wonderful, wonderful Jesus,
In the heart He implanteth a song:
A song of deliv'rance, of courage and strength,
In the heart He implanteth a song.
Elton M. Roth

Or for those of you who grew up going to camp-meetins and summer youth camps,

In my heart there rings a melody
There rings a melody with heaven's harmony
In my heart there rings a meldy
There rings a melody of love.

Sages throughout history have suspected this to be the case. Edgar Lee Masters, in his Spoon River Anthology (1992), has the Riddler say "The earth gets some vibration going down in your heart, and that is you."⁷¹ On a street level we've even devised a vernacular for it. When the constellation of vibrating energies between two people move toward one another -- in all their juxtapositions and oppositions -- and those vibrations are in sympathy with each other, we say two people are "on the same wavelength." Or they are "in tune with each other;" or they "make beautiful music together:" or they give off "good vibes." There are some people you can never please. Why? The constellation of vibrations do not match. When people inhabit different song environments, we say they are "not on the same wavelength;" they give off "bad vibes;" they're not "in harmony," ect.

Every encounter with another person is a dance. Part of interpersonal relationships is learning the different steps and rhythms of people. When two people feel each others' beat, they learn when to lead, when to follow, and when to stand there and enjoy the music. A mature soul has learned to read the energy fields of others. Some people give off low vibrations; others are high wattage people. Some people suck energy out of you; others plug you in to the energies of the universe.

You offer me flowers and you mean well by it. But I can live even without flowers, and without music too; I could very well do without many other things as well, if it were necessary. But one thing I cannot and will not do without: I can never live so much as a single day in such a way that the music in my heart is not dominant. If I am to live with a man, it must be one whose inner music harmonizes beautifully and exactly with mine, and his single desire must be that his own music be pure and that it blend well with mine.
Iris to Anselm after his proposal of marriage, in Herman Hesse's "Iris"⁷²

Soldiers throughout history have known about sympathetic vibrations, as have certain opera singers like Caruso and jazz musicians like Ella Fitzgerald. Before soldiers cross a bridge, what do they do? They break step. Why? Because their candence gives off a frequency, a sound. If their marching song matches the frequency of the bridge, then there is achieved a technical state called "resonance," and when resonance is reached there is a tremendous explosion of energy -- an something's got to give. And it isn't going to be the song. So whether that bridge is built of stone or steel, that song bombs that bridge and blows it up.

You don't think vibrations have power?

What collapsed the Tacoma bridge? The wind created a double oscillation that matched the frequency of the bridge and it came crashing down.

What is keeping the Hancock Building in Boston from tumbling down? Two floors at the top are dedicated to "mass tuning" the building.⁷³

What killed the technician who first tested one of the French engineer Gavraud discoveries? The whistle used by French and English police, when you put a pea in it, produced sub-audio frequencies. Gavraud experimented with a six-foot version of the whistle powered by compressed air, and the internal organs of his assitant were blown to smithereens.⁷⁴

Why is it forbidden to sing "Louis, Louie" at a Clemson football game? Because the stadium began to crumble, and university officials discovered it wasn't because of defective architectural design, or inferior construction work or materials. It was because that song "Louie, Louie" gave off frequencies which matched perfectly the frequency of the stadium. A song was literally destroying the stadium. And when opposing teams found that out . . .

What power source will be running your refrigerator in the near future? Music. Sound power is the next step in clean energy. Scientists are already sending sound waves through special containers and obtaining clean power through a process called "RMS" (Resonant Macrosonic Synthesis).

What accompanied the ark as it was brought to Jerusalem? (II Sam. 6:15) When Joshua ordered that trumpet blast, what do you think he was doing? What ended the Israelites' 40-year sojourn in the desert and crumbled the walls of Jericho?

What will make the dead to rise? When Jesus descends from the heavens, how will we know? At the curtain of history, which God has been "upholding . . . by the word of His power" (NKJV), Jesus returns to earth with a great shout and song: "Hallelujah! The Lord Our God, the Almighty, reigns."

NOW: Can you understand why prayer is the most powerful force in the universe?

THE REAL LORD'S PRAYER

There is only one way we can legitimately use the phraise "The Lord's Prayer." The real "Lord's prayer," the prayer Jesus prayed, is found in John 17. The prayer we call "The Lord's Prayer" is really the prayer Jesus gave his disciple to pray. We can call it "The Lord's Prayer" rather than "The Disciples' Prayer" if the point is not to say it but to become it. My greatest ambition in life is to become a "Lord's Prayer" -- for everything I do, literally everything, to be dedicated and offered to God as a prayer.

So thisis what prayer is: prayer is living in a score of Grace. Prayer is composing one's life without fear to the scale of grace. How? Turn Off, Turn On, Tune In, Tune Up, Stay Tuned.

First, prayer is turning off my soul to the frequencies of the world, interrupting the cultural background music with all its static and dissonance, and tuning out the world's clang and static.

Second, prayer is turning on my soul to the frequencies where God's Spirit operates, the sound track of the Spirit, and resisting either jazzing up the sound track of the world or allowing other registers to lure me away by listening to the innter voices that emanate from outside oneself.

Third, prayer is tuning in my soul to those frequencies of the Spirit where love holds sway. Jacob Boehme said the soul itself was "a tuned Instrument of the Harmony of God," a part of God's kingdom of joy "which God's spirit would play upon."⁷⁵ When we tonally lose our way, we "sin." To tune out God is to sin. T live our lives tuned off to the accompaniment of heaven is to sin.

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Come, thou Font of every blessing,
     tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
     call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
     sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
     mount of thy redeeming love.
                                  Robert Robinson (1758)

Fourth, prayer is tuning up my soul through constant fine tuning to the music of the spheres. The growing of a soul requires the development of a musical ear. No ear, and you can't separate noise from signals. How do you develop that ear? With a tuning fork. We can tune up our lives because God gave us a tuning fork to the eternal that enhances, even enchants our existence. And the name of that tuning fork is . . . Jesus the Christ: God's Perfect Pitch.

Atonement is attunement. An illtuned instrument becomes illtempered, dissonant and indiscriminating. A pitch pipe, which establishes a standard pitch level, keeps our instruments in tuen. Jesus is God's Absolute Pitch. God's Perfect Pitch.

We played the pipes for you, and you wouldn't dance.
Jesus (Matthew 11:17)

Finally, when we tune our lives to his song, and stay tuned to Christ, we can experience resonance with the eternal. And when resonance is reached, something's got to give: and it's not going to be God. When we vibrate with the eternal, our lives modulate into new levels of living and awareness. Modulation means we become transformed in God's image. Now "born from above" we take on the likeness and consciousness of Christ. When God's Spirit bears witness with our spirit . . . when your spirit bears witness with another's spirit (Romans 8:16) . . . the vibrations of eternity become incarnate.

In these high moments of resonance, there is such an unleashing and releasing of resurrection energies that we can become literally "The Lord's Prayer." Only then can we live out of the seven first words of the Christian: "I can do all things through Christ" (Phil. 4:13).

But wait a minute: Where is this in the Scriptures, you say?

John the Baptist, whose self-proclaimed identity was one of "voice," begins his gospel thus: "In the beginning was the Logos." We translate that word "Logos" as "Word." But get out your Greek Dictionary. Logos literally translates as "Speech" or "Talk." "Logos" derives from legein, which means to say aloud or utter. Logos means both "Sound" and "Word."

"In the beginning was the . . . Sound." Clement of Alexandria talked about "The Holy Scriptures" as "The Holy Logos" (Clem.A.II, 354A). The Bible is "The Holy Sound" or I prefer "The Holy Song." Jesus is the Sound of God, The Sound Made Flesh.

In the beginning was the Song,
and the Song was with God,
and the Song was God.

Does any of this sound familiar? Isn't this what two former high-school English teachers, Bill and Gloria Gaither have already taught us? In more than 600 songs, they have dragged out our souls with a thousand strings. But their one song "God Gave the Song" says it all. For those who have ears to hear . . .
1) You ask me why my heart keeps singing Why I can sing when things go wrong But since I've found the source of music I just can't help it, God gave the song.

2) Come walk with me thru fields and forests We'll climb the hills and still hear that song For even hills resound with music They just can't help it. God gave the song.

Narration:

Yes, God gave the song. It's always been with us. The song came into our world through a manger in Bethlehem. It was a simple song -- a simple lovely song for every man. Right from the first, some tried to ignore it. They said, "There's no song! It simply doesn't exist." Other just tried to change the tune. They made laws to stop it. Armies marched against it. They killed some who sang the song. They creamed at it in fury, they tried to drown it out. Finally they nailed that song to a tree. They said to themselves, 'There . . . that should take care of that.'

But it didn't.

3) What's that I hear, I still hear that music day after day, that song goes on. For once you know the source of music, you'll always hear it. God gave the song.

4) Come on and join, it's the song of Jesus Day after day, that song goes on. For once you know the source of music, you'll always hear it. Gave gave the song.⁷⁶