August 20 - Rejoice With All Your Heart

August 20 - Rejoice With All Your Heart
Zephaniah 3:14; Ephesians 5:19

Sing, O Daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O Daughter of Jerusalem! (Zeph 3:14)

Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord. (Eph 5:19)

There was a bass in one of my church choirs.  The man couldn’t hold a tune to save his life, but he loved to sing.  We simply surrounded him with better singers than he and hoped they would hold him on pitch as much as possible.

I was only in high school when I encountered this.  As a young girl with perfect pitch, this could have rattled me a lot, but I learned through the example of people much wiser than me, that his joy came from singing and there was no one who planned to squash that.

Since then, I’ve met an awful lot of people who apologize to me for the terrible singing voice after sitting behind me in church. Because they hear me sing, either in the pew or from the stage, they think my gift is so much greater than theirs.  I had one man apologize to me nearly every week.  I would just laugh and tell him I would rather hear him singing off-pitch than not singing at all.  It’s true.

Nowhere in scripture does it say that only those with voices like angels, or those with perfect pitch, or even those who can sing on pitch are allowed to sing praises to God.  Just because our voices don’t hit pitch perfectly doesn’t mean our hearts aren’t leaping to sing out.

In both the Old and New Testaments, God tells us to sing. Your voice doesn’t need to be perfect and your song doesn’t need to hit pitch when He calls to your heart.