Comfort One Another With Singing

We were fighting back tears. His feeble, emaciated body lay nearly lifeless upon the bed. With each passing hour, his breathing became more labored. It was a moment we knew eventually would come, yet one that none of us were ready for. Dad was passing from this life into the next, and our hearts were torn between wanting him to stay and letting him go to a place where his suffering would cease. Waiting for him to die was almost more than we could bear, but among the many things that gave my family comfort and strength was when we gathered around his bed to sing beautiful hymns of praise.

My dad loved to sing, and over the course of his 86 years he had led us in countless hymns. At church assemblies, family reunions, special occasions, and while travelling in our car, singing was a huge part of my life; a blessing of growing up with such a godly man. Singing encouraged Dad, and it encouraged me. My earliest memories of knowing about the love of Jesus and the hope He provides came from the hymns both Dad and my mother sang to me when I was a youth. Even today, when I hear the familiar refrain “peace, be still,” from the well-known hymn Master the Tempest is Raging, I am comforted in knowing the timeless truth learned from my youth that “even the winds and the sea obey him” (Mt. 8:23f).

Designed by God, singing is meant to shape our thinking and edify our souls (Ephesians 5:19). When words are set to a melodic tune, they are often much more powerful and memorable. Singing awakens our emotions and can soothe our heart during emotionally difficult times (Acts 16:25), and the message of the song tends to stay with us even after its chords have ceased. Like the sound of a harp that continues to vibrate long after its strings are plucked, so is the joy and comfort that remain when music passes the strings of the human heart. Though the sound is gone, its effect remains, just as it did after my father died.

In the hours and days that followed our mournful last goodbyes,

my father’s earthly passing was seen through heaven’s eyes.

The songs we sang while near his side continue with me still,

They calm my heart and soothe my mind wherever I may lie,

I hear them now, they linger on: my dad is “where the soul NEVER dies.”