A New Song

"O, sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord all the earth." (Psalm 96:1)

For the first time the other day, I was struck by the hope and power of this verse. Perhaps I had never really read the "new" part. Perhaps I've become so accustomed to the image of the earth singing praises to God, that its revolutionary sting has been numbed. The fact is though, that I think we sing the same old songs an awful lot. Even our most ardent attempts to sing something new tends to have a very familiar rhythm, beat, and melody.
This is one of the struggles we face when we hear the gospel, when we trust in the truth it offers, when we see ourselves and our neighbors in the fresh light that it casts. "How can we who died to sin, go on living in it?" Paul cries (Rom 6:2). How, once we've experienced the sweetness of new life in Christ, can we return to the now bitter taste of the past? How, once we've heard truth, can we return to what we now see as lies? Even Paul knew just how easily this happens: "for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do" (Rom 7:19).
Those old familiar songs provide us with the temporary comfort we seek to get us through a difficult day; they allow us to sing words that we know we can live out (if for no other reason than the fact that we have to try desperately not to); our old songs welcome us back with open arms, enveloping us like a warm blanket.
But we soon recognize that that blanket is full of fleas. It's once soft fibers turn sharp as barbed wire. The tune we once loved is dissonant and painful. It's comfort indeed, is temporary.

My grandmother was a piano teacher. Somehow it always seemed, that when she was at our house, it was time for me to practice. Rather than practice though, I preferred to display my mastery of "Chopsticks," that most familiar tune that everyone who can't play piano knows at least part of. Few tunes are more irritating to piano teachers. Every ten-year-old child who walks through their doors sits on the bench and promptly begins to bang it out. It nearly sent my poor grandmother through the roof. With the first notes, she would be at the piano-room door rebuking me. Comparatively, my butchery of Chopin was transcendent next to my mastery of Chopsticks.
My grandmother knew that even the most preliminary muddling through something new, something more challenging, something inevitably more beautiful was of greater value than the familiar, the simplistic, the ultimately irritating. I've started to see her point.

Something important lies within the seemingly duplicitous points that Paul makes. Once we can play--even once we have heard--Chopin, how can we go back to Chopsticks? But isn't it fun to bang that old song out once more? I often waiver between these two places . The Psalmist reminds us however, that we are called not to return to the easy comfort of old songs, but to strive to belt out a new one. We are called to stop going back to the songs that keep us mired in apathy, keep us bound by self-imposed limitations, the songs that hurt the ears of those around us and stop their feet from dancing. Instead, learn the new song. Play and sing the song that expands possibilities. Join the song that inspires instead of limits. Let the earth sing the song that frees all people to dance, to leap, to love. Let the earth sing the song that Jesus sings, a song of radical newness, of abundant life.