What's in a Song?
Reimagining God's Greatness
As a kid, there were worship songs that could snatch me from the quicksand of familial dysfunction, deteriorating friendships, and depression.
Particularly the songs that testified to God’s greatness.
Imma keep it a tall glass of water with you. “How Great is Our God” was that song for me. I ain’t really know who wrote it until I heard them radio hosts divulge that information. Let’s just say I really appreciate the Black choir renditions of this song, though I have been moved by it in just about every worship setting I’ve heard it sung in.
There’s something profound about knowing that you know above you and around you exists an unexplainable essence and intractable presence whose sights are on you even when you’re in the scope of tragedy. In this knowing, and the singing that proceeds from such knowing, lies a comforting premise that God’s relationship to creation and time and humanity is special and that, whatever happenings befall us, God remains.
I wish I knew the science that undergirds the transcendent experiences singing gives us. I remember visiting nursing homes with my high-school choir, spreading cheer via Christmas carols, hymns and old, niche Irish ballads.
The moments that spoke to me most deeply were the ones when we would go into the Alzheimer's units and sing to our friends there. Fam. Some of these songs would wipe the creases from the foreheads of these weary and isolated patients. How could a silly jingle inspire hope within those who could no longer spell hope? I don’t know, but I’ve seen the temporary healing a song can produce.
Over time, though, the power and truth of a song have in some ways fallen flat for me. Personally, the thrill of ascribing worth to God’s name felt like a practice I didn’t know how to reconcile with what my heart actually felt. And it’s not like I could coerce my heart to believe that Jesus is Lord though my mouth confessed it on many days.
What’s in a song when its magic runs out? What does it mean to extol God’s greatness with a melody while not knowing how to square God’s greatness with the might of evil powers and leaders that unleash fire on innocent civilians? What good does affirming the greatness of a deity who doesn’t have to account before our faces for the atrocities we’ve observed?
The philosophical attempts to address the problem of evil don’t really fit alongside the reflections in this post (thank God). Still, evil’s presence does affect my struggle to cope with the decreasing, affective power songs have played in my life. The healing properties once present in the melodies and harmonies sung by people whose faith in Jesus has gotten curb-stomped by foolishness and natural causes often weaken when horrendous conditions persist.
Greatness is hard to attest to when suffering pervades. Yet… I wonder if our honesty about the unsatisfactory categories with which we once spoke and sang of God’s greatness doesn’t necessarily require our denial of a God who is great.
Greatness, which is often an attribution of superiority and reputability to something or someone, may need some reconceptualization so our songs don’t feel as if they are being voiced in vain. It’s possible that we perhaps attached too much significance to the chills that traveled down our spines during worship services and that very detaching could fix the problems we’ve longed to resolve. But my hunch is that even biblical references to the greatness of a God who rescues redeems, and rewards the faithful face doubt due to disappointment in said greatness.
But, I wonder what would happen if we developed an understanding of greatness that wasn’t strictly linked to regal status and unrivaled accomplishment. What if God’s greatness in our imaginations comprised celebrating our survival despite the postponement of the miraculous intervention we crave? God’s greatness should not only serve our preference that the Divine’s will suit our purposes. Greatness includes God’s ability to hold onto our stories and accompany us while we do what we can to persevere and sing with the tragic knowledge that memories fade and policies inked with hate still determine many lived realities.
Within this understanding of greatness that exists in the mundane and chaos lingers an uncontrollable friend refusing to stand far off though not always perceivable. Somehow, however naively, this view has helped me sing one more time. And when I’m not able to, I’ll eavesdrop on the singing of another in the same space as me, hoping God’ll count their singing as mine. When the greatness ain’t that impressive to me, threatening my mind to deem any affiliation with God as archaic, I remember that I’m still here. A “How Great is Our God” seems in order for that very fact.
And while there are many others who also should be here with us, my imagination dreams up a God whose greatness surpasses this iteration of this world, hosting a space where those we’ve lost have been singing to a sweet Jesus we’ve hoped will be our final and great consolation. And as we reconceive God’s greatness, new meanings can shape us perhaps in ways they were meant to the whole time.
Luh y’all big time,
Ru :)
