Human beings have a long-standing affinity for not just telling stories but singing stories. From Charlie Daniels’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” to Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana,” to Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus Take the Wheel,” to Johnny Cash’s “One Piece at a Time,” we love story songs!
While it’s true that all songs contain some element of story, some songs make the telling of a story their purpose. Sometimes the stories are fictional (’cause I’m pretty sure Charlie didn’t really have a fiddle-duel with the devil), sometimes they’re based on a true story (like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”), but almost all of them end up standing for something more than the song itself.
For example, Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John” isn’t really so much about a 6'6", 245-pound miner as much as it is about how self-sacrifice on behalf of others is what really makes a person big. The song is about more than the story that’s being told.
The Psalms contain plenty of this type of song. If you’re interested, check out Psalm 44, 78, 107, 135 and 136 on your own.
But my favorite is Psalm 105 — the beautiful, anonymous song that tells the centuries-long story of God’s people going into Egypt, and then later emerging out of Egypt. It’s a story about Israel, but in the end, it’s not so much about Israel; instead, it’s a story about God.
Difficult things happened to Joseph.
Difficult things happened to Jacob and his descendants. But God, through it all, was at work, playing the long game … developing what was going to become a nation of people that He would eventually free from what had become a prison for them.
Again, we don’t know who wrote Psalm 105, but it was someone (or a group of someones) who looked back over Israel’s history and said, “This is a story that needs to be told!”
Why? Why in the world would Israel want to sing this song? The only answer that makes any sense to me is because as human beings, one of our greatest faults is that we are, undeniably, forgetful. But if we would just look back at God’s story — at our story — if, in the midst of our own difficulties, we would just turn around and look back at His track record, God has already demonstrated that He’s going to take care for us … that He’s going to provide for us … that He’s going to be good to us.
Why would Israel sing this song? Because it reminded them that even when times were hard, God was still at work. And even when it seemed like they were losing the battles, God was playing the long game and winning the war. God had His eye, not necessarily on their comfort or convenience, sometimes not even on their happiness ...
No. God had His eye on His children’s wholeness and relationship and freedom … larger values that we sometimes don’t esteem nearly as much as we do comfort and convenience.
It was a song that Israel would need to sing throughout her history to be reminded of those things, again and again. It was a song they would need to tell their children. It was a song they would need to help them celebrate together what God had done.
And we need this kind of thing as well. We are certainly not immune to spiritual amnesia. We need songs that help us know what is true, but maybe we have begun to doubt, in the fog of our disappointment. We need songs that confront us with what we know to be important, but maybe have gotten distracted from, in the busyness of life.
When we rightly praise God — “This is who You are, and this is what You’ve done” — when we do that enough, we will find ourselves drawn into the narrative, into the story that God is still writing. And when we are drawn, we too will find ourselves confronted by God’s goodness, His reliability, His power. We’ll find ourselves confronted by the fact that God still stands up for the people He loves. We will be confronted by all of the things that Psalm 105 is really about.
As we write our own songs, we need to ask the question: What’s God been up to lately?
I’m convinced that if we will ask and answer that question often, we will have more stories and songs to share and tell than we ever would have had if we hadn’t asked the question. Because if we don’t ask the question, we will largely be blind to the undeniable and irrefutable presence and activity of God in our lives.
God’s all around us — make no mistake about that! If we doubt, it might be because we have missed a lot of what He’s been up to lately simple because we haven’t been paying attention!
So, What’s God been up to lately?
We are called to remember … to share … to celebrate what God has and what He is still doing!