Race, Justice and Gospel Music - Seth PinnockSample

Sing

The prophet Isaiah reminds us today that God is a God of reversal. Sing exclaims that “dry bones will become blessed.” God's mission is to restore and reconcile all things, some of which we will experience here and now. Where there is shame, God will replace it with honor and emptiness will be replaced by abundance. 

Many of Isaiah’s prophecies are cited with references to the Exodus - and Isaiah foresees a new Exodus for the captive Israelites in Babylon. But when they return to the land, there are four hundred years of rulers who stifle their Miriam-song of freedom and triumph. They had lost their song and even their desire to sing due to being held in Babylon, which they referred to as a ‘strange land’, then facing the tyranny of the Roman Empire. 

Often, it can feel that we have also lost our song, and our desire to sing in the wilderness and under the weight of various ‘tyranny’. Perhaps you can recall such a season in your own life? As God changes things, our silence and mourning can quickly become song and melody, but sometimes we are called to ‘sing’ even when a thing has yet to come to pass. 

Sing is a reminder of the power our voices carry as we declare of the Maker who carries us through the wilderness, promising us rivers in the desert despite how barren our ‘womb’ or situation may feel. 

Paying homage to many bondaged in centuries past during the Slave Trade, Sing also echoes voices singing the songs of their God, just as the Israelites did, in ‘a strange land’. During that time of great injustice, violence and disaster, Black slaves would sing songs about freedom found in God whilst living in deep oppression - songs of hope while still in the wilderness.

The Scripture, and the song for today proclaim that God’s people sing in spite of the current circumstance, and we sing not about a distant stranger, but to the Creator and Lover of our soul. Those who love the Lord are bound to the King, whose ways are just and true. So today, let us rejoice and be glad in Him!