All Nature Sings

My husband wanted to teach our six-year-old grandson a simple praise chorus on a recent car trip. He sang the song, then asked our grandson to try to sing along.

“Can I just lip-sync it?” our grandson asked.

After my laughter subsided, I wondered how he even knew that term. But as I thought about his comment over the next few days, I remembered something Jesus said.

As He was riding on a donkey into the city of Jerusalem, about a week before Jesus would give His life on the cross, the crowd that gathered began shouting praises in loud voices. Luke tells us (Luke 19:37-38) that those who had gathered there spread cloaks on the road, and they shouted because they had witnessed Jesus’s miracles. The crowd was yelling, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38, NIV).

Some of the Pharisees asked Jesus to rebuke His disciples. Jesus replied, “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (verse 40).

As I thought about the possibility of hearing the stones praising Jesus, I looked up some other examples in the Bible of nature praising the Creator. When Job was questioning God as to why he had suffered so much, God asked him, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?…while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?”(Job 38:7). I can only imagine how it sounded when the stars sang praise to God as He created the earth!

The prophet Isaiah reminds us (Isaiah 55:12) that “the mountains and hills will burst into song…and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” The psalmist (in Psalm 98:8) calls on the rivers to clap and the mountains to sing for joy before the Lord. And in Psalm 148:3-10, the psalmist commands the sun and moon, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds, fruit and cedar trees, and animals of all kinds to give praise to God.

The hymn writer expressed it this way: “This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears, all nature sings and ‘round me rings the music of the spheres.” So the question I’m left with is this: Are we joining in, praising our mighty God, or are we just lip-syncing?

Carol C. and her husband have been married for 50 years.  She is a proud mother and grandmother, as well as a teacher and author. Look here for more blogs by Carol C.  You can listen to any of our Bible studies by tuning in to your favorite radio station, listening to our podcast on iTunes, or listening through TuneIn, Spotify, or Stitcher online radio.