Sung Promises & Comfort

I often set my iTunes to “shuffle mode” to let it pick songs randomly and this evening it grabbed an impromptu MP3 recording that I had made back in early 2007. This was recording features all of Sarah’s immediate family gathered around the hospital bed of her brother Andrew Hilleke back in 2007.

Hillekes singing Wondrous King, All-Glorious

Hearing this tonight reminded me of the power of music in this setting. I would hope that more and more of us would think of this as a great way to encourage and minister to those who are ill and bed-ridden. This is exactly how I’d want to be encouraged. I’d want to hear the Psalms and the great hymns of the Christian Church to remind me in my time of struggle.

When you don’t know how to comfort someone with words, why not just sing to them. Then you don’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing. Just remind them in song of what the Lord’s promised to us and to them.

This singing was a blessing to us and it gave us something to put our energies toward. It also was a picture of our unity in wanting to see our brother be encouraged as he laid in that hospital bed. We weren’t each just offering our own solitary words of encouragement, but rather as an extension of the church we were unified in our encouragement and glorifying it in a way that our words just couldn’t do alone.