Singing Is An Act Of Worship

I’m sharing this message that I received from a friend in response to yesterday’s post.

As a mailman, I met a farmer on a back road. The farmer and I knew each other well. He had 3 sons who also lived on my route and I knew them as good natured, hard-working men. The farmer’s wife had many parcels delivered to the door, some 200 feet from the road, where she worked outside in the garden or flowerbeds. A hard-working and straightforward woman who saw things very clearly and who gave her opinion freely.

The farmer, on his tractor, came off one of his many fields and paused to talk to his mailman. Some years earlier the farmer had an accident and had lost his driving privileges but was allowed to drive tractors. So, most of his day saw him driving a tractor on the back roads or fields or even into town.

The conversation today somehow turned to growing up in the early 1900’s and like many of the mailman’s conversations the question of church arose. Yes, there had been a church. A good one with a good preacher that the family had gone to for years.

“So where do you go now?” asked the mailman?

The farmer shook his head. His first wife never had much use for church and his second present wife wouldn’t go to any of the ones he would have liked. He looked sad and shrugged his shoulders.

“Did you sing in church?” asked the mailman?

The 83 year old farmer brightened and smiled. Yes, they sang all the time.

“Do you remember the songs?”

“I suppose, but its been 70 or more years.”

“Do you remember one called, ‘Jesus Loves Me?’”

“I do.”

“Would you sing it with me?” said the mailman?

So the two men in a mail truck and on a tractor sang a beloved song from both of their pasts, on a back road where only they and God could hear. When they finished the farmer had tears in his eyes and so did the mailman. The farmer blew his nose in the handkerchief that farmers always seem to have and we parted ways with a smile and a wave.

The simple truth of Jesus’s love had been spoken through a song.

                                    — Tom Horsfall

Isaiah 55:11

“So will My Word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire…”