As he was drawing near -- already on the way down the Mount of Olives -- the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out." (Luke 19:37-40, ESV)
We had NPR on in the car yesterday as we were driving, and for about the first hour of our journey Ethan decided that he didn't like the music vacuum (he gets it from his father, who thinks NPR is for checking to see if anything specialized and interesting is on before almost always putting on some more Spock's Beard or Proto-Kaw.) He just decided to fill the void himself by singing all the songs from a kids' praise CD his grandmother gave him that his little brother has since hidden on him. Ethan understands pretty much none of the content of these songs. I don't mean that he understands few of its implications. I mean that he really doesn't know what almost all of the words he's singing mean, and in many cases he might not even think they mean anything. It's the sounds he's singing, because the songs he likes have those sounds. He doesn't have a clue that he's even singing about anything, never mind understanding what it means. Yet he's belting out "Oh, oh, oh, give the glory all to God!" The stones will cry out indeed, but you don't need to be an inanimate object to do what Jesus was talking about.
That is truly a blessing.
What's sad, however, is being surrounded by grown-ups on Sunday morning who still don't have a clue as to what they're singing. Ever notice how often the word "I" is used is modern praise and worship songs? And how often the focus is on what "I" do for God, rather than what He's already done?
In too many churches, Sunday morning worship has been replaced by a pop music concert. If I hear "You're the air that I breathe" one more time...
Derek, I used to think that was a good argument, but then I realized that the same thing could be said about the psalms. Many of them make liberal use of first-person pronouns.