Power of Music

I have heard plenty of stories about the power of music. Stories about how the sick are made well by simply hearing music. Stories of how people who are brain dead react to the presence of music. Just the other day I was playing music at an assisted living facility. I’ll be honest, I’m running out of music to play for these people. I try to play music that they know best. Songs from the 40s, 50s, 60s, sometimes 70s. I like to keep things new every time I return, but I’m running out of songs I know. For some reason that doesn’t matter to these people. I play the same songs (maybe add a few new ones) and they happily sing along like they did the time before. Perhaps they don’t remember that I was just there last month playing the same songs. I tend to think that these songs strike a chord with these people.

The first time I visited this place a lady sat in her wheelchair tearing up in my final songs. As she said, ‘The songs brought back memories.’ You could tell that those simple words held great meaning and a lot of history.

In the middle of my last concert, another woman asked the ladies she was sitting next to if they were going to school tomorrow. (Tomorrow was Sunday. I’m pretty sure those ladies haven’t been to a school in over 50 years, and from the looks on those ladies faces, they had no idea what this gal was talking about). On a previous visit this lady was ready to leave the concert at the end and swore the sweater in her lap was not hers (even though one of the nurses assured her she took it from her closet). This lady might have no idea what day it is, what her clothes looks like, or how old she is, but when I started to play a certain song, suddenly the room was filled with her loud voice. It wasn’t pretty, and you wouldn’t be able to make out the tune if she were singing without me playing, but boy did she know those words.

On Saturday, I could see a lady sitting outside of the room I was playing in. She was peering in from the window, but clearly trying to appear invisible. As I left the room full of people after the concert she wheeled up to me in her wheel chair and said “I wasn’t planning on coming in to listen but then I heard you playing ‘I Can’t help Falling in Love with You’ and I couldn’t leave. That was our song. We use to dance to it all the time. It made me think of him.”

It doesn’t take much effort to see that music has power. The stories above are simple messages of that compared to other stories I have heard.

Music can bring back memories, and also hold healing components. Physical. Emotional. Spiritual. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in my car, on the highway, in between two small towns, all by myself, and I find myself singing along with the music in my car at the top of my lungs. It doesn’t sound pretty, but that’s the beauty of being in the car by yourself. For some reason there is something about it that is beyond beautiful to my soul. There is something about it that nothing else can compare, something healing.

Have you ever realized how many times the Bible talks about singing and music? Just looking at all of those passages might open your mind in a new way. In the Psalms alone, the word ‘sing’ (or a word closely resembled to singing) is mentioned over 40 times. Why is that? I believe that God gave us music for a reason. He wanted something that could touch the human soul deeper than anything. Music. Art. Beauty. Why? Because He loves us. He wants us to have this connection to music that would hopefully draw us closer to Him. Some people say that when they listen to music they are brought to another world, or to their happy place, or to a place of freedom.  I read in a magazine: “The miracle of music and song is that there is no other vehicle available to us on earth that has the ability to bring to attention our mind and our auditory senses, arresting the heart and moving the soul to a point where our whole self is focused in one direction.”

This brings a whole new meaning to the Psalm: “I will sing and make music to the Lord.” The power behind music is that it can sweep us away. God gave it power to move us to our feet and to our knees, but we must choose how and to whom we sing and make music for. It’s easy for it to be all about ourselves because music makes us feel good, and no one else can understand the deep connection we have with certain songs. But music wasn’t meant for us to keep to ourselves. Its purpose was to draw us deeper into ourselves so we can dig deeper into God. It’s in those intimate times of profound insight, when its just you and the music that God is on display. That’s the power of music.