Episode 19 - We can always sing

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Welcome to Jen’s New Song.  My name is Jennifer Holmes and I write and speak and podcast on the intersection of faith and mental illness.  When I started planning this topic of one anothering for the podcast a few months ago, I had no idea a global pandemic was coming.  I thought I would be speaking on one anothering in a normal time, when we could gather as the body of Christ, be challenged to see our people more, and to have them become an intentional part of our every day lives.  Things look a lot different right now.  The body of Christ can’t meet together in real life, we can’t be in each other’s homes, and many people can’t even meet outside for a walk or a talk on a porch - six feet apart of course.  So I wondered about changing the topic, but decided not to.  Because I think we need more intentional thought on one anothering even more right now.  Our role in the body of Christ has not changed, even if the application has.  So we will continue on with our Bible study of one anothering and just try to apply it in ways that work right now.  Also, we’ll probably skip over the verse that tells us to greet one another with a holy kiss for now.

Last week we talked about disappointment and how we are to weep with those who weep.  Weeping and lament are things we don’t talk about often enough in today’s Christianity.  It doesn’t fit with our idea of prosperity.  Even those of us who don’t believe in a prosperity gospel can find ourselves caught up with the idea that everything will work out if we just believe enough or praise God enough.  It’s true that God is working all things together for our good.  It’s just that his idea of good is making us more like Christ while our idea of good is an easy life.  And one of the ways we can get this prosperity gospel theology out of our every day lives is to weep and lament and be honest with God and others about the difficult things of life.

But do we want to stay there?  I don’t think so.  I think Biblical lament is meant to lead us back to God and to the joy that can be found in our salvation.  Because I’m talking about this a week later, I don’t want you to think that you should weep and lament for one week and then get over it.  That’s not what I’m saying.  What I am saying is that there is a time when we weep with one another and then there is a time we encourage one another.  These might actually go back and forth for a while.  In reality, they should probably go back and forth our whole lives.  

So, you might be asking, what do we do next after we weep with someone?  I’ve been thinking about this all week.  I knew I wanted to do the next episode on helping to start to lift someone up.  I also know we all want to avoid being friends like Job.  You know, the kind of friends who are awesome for the first two weeks and then end up being terrible friends because they can’t stick with lament.  In fact, now that I think of it, Job’s friends are a perfect example of this type of prosperity gospel theology that can permeate our suffering.  They were so convinced that Job just need to get right with God because surely if he had been a good Christian, he wouldn’t be going through this suffering.  We can identify it so easily in Job’s friends, but we can have a hard time identifying it in ourselves.

So how do we sit with a friend, weeping, and then encourage them?  First, we pray fiercely for wisdom.  The last thing we want is to speak to early.  But I think think that Colossians has the answer, or one of the answers at least, for when we do speak.  Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”

I think this might be a beautiful way to start.  It doesn’t say to start teaching one another with harsh words and long sermons.  No, it says we can help one another by singing to them.  And singing together.  

I’ve been watching on the internet as some of the most beautiful stories of community are coming together through music.  Balconies in Italy, rooftops in New York, internet choirs, people writing new songs, so much of the beauty of these isolated days is rooted in music.  It is, and has always been, one of the ways we draw close to one another.

I have a friend I’ve never met in real life who writes beautiful songs born out of her own difficult situation.  She just wrote one called He has been enough and my heart was so encouraged as I listened this morning.  In it she speaks of and acknowledges the hard times, she doesn’t pretend they didn’t happen.  But she leads us, her listeners, on a journey to remember that Jesus is still enough, even in the middle of the suffering.

Psalms, hymns, and spirituals songs are all such a gentle way to lead someone back to the truth.  To turn them, not from their lament, but in their lament back to Jesus.  The psalms are full of weeping and lament, but also full of truth.  Last season we studied the pattern seen in so many psalms where the writer tells us exactly how he’s feeling, but then also reminds himself of the truth about who God is and how He is sufficient for the situation.  What a beautiful pattern for us to follow in our sorrow.  The old hymns are so full of truth and doctrine, and if you look carefully, you can see how they were also born out of suffering and difficulty.  If you sit with the words of It is Well for even just a few minutes, you might find yourself with tears in your eyes because you can completely relate to the suffering of the writer, yet you end up encouraged to say, even so it is well with my soul.  And writers are continuing to do this today with hymns and spiritual songs.  A good playlist does wonders for the soul.

When my life was at it’s hardest three years ago I had this friend who texted me almost every day.  He would ask me questions about how I was doing, about the logistics of my life, basically just checking up on me.  But far more often, almost every day for a while, he would send me a song.  Those songs were like a lifeline.  A permission to cry for the day, but also, always leading me back to God.  It was such a gift.  One I won’t forget.

So, if you’ve been weeping with one another and you’re looking for a gentle way to help encourage one another in the midst, I think Colossians has a beautiful answer for us.  Sing.  Sing separately or together.  Send a playlist, a youtube link, write a song, read a psalm, or anything else you can think of.  Let’s encourage one another with gentle truth in hard times.

Thank you for joining me today.  I’m really excited about this series and hope you are too.  If you’d like to hear from me more and get almost daily encouragement, I hope you’ll join me on Instagram or Facebook.  Just search Jens New Song.  You can find transcripts of these episodes on my website if you prefer to read the rest of the season.  My website is jensnewsong.com  I also have a free mini course available on there on the life of Elijah and what it teaches us about our mental health.

If you enjoyed todays episode and you’re excited about this series, would you forward this to a friend?  It might be a great way to build community in your own church!  And if you’re really excited, would you go leave a rating and review in iTunes?  That’s how other people find the podcast.  Or subscribe on YouTube so you don’t miss the next episode.  Thanks everyone.  Go love someone today!