Have you ever noticed the great cloud of musical sound that surrounds us at every point in our daily lives? Whether walking through a store, passing someone with earbuds on the street, catching up on the news, or watching a movie, we are exposed to music that has been painstakingly crafted to influence our behavior, our purchasing decisions, or manipulating our emotions. Music is woven into the fabric of our life experiences, just as much as God’s communication through nature. Much of the music we are presented with is not of our own choosing. Much of it accompanies other content.

All music, however, communicates with us at varying levels of our being as humans. Rhythm speaks to our body, our flesh. Melody speaks to our spirit, and our soul. Harmony captivates our mind, our aesthetic sensibilities. All of it gently prods our minds and our hearts and our actions in one direction or another. Sometimes, it is difficult to even tell on a purely intellectual level where the music is leading us, but lead us it does. How important it is, then, that the music we choose be the kind of music that points us in the direction we ought to be moving, not fighting our spirit, or turning us in directions that we should be avoiding.

I believe that we as humans have been created with an innate proclivity for musical expression, that we enjoy the feelings created by organized sound, and that we thrill to participate in making these musical sounds. Truly we are made in God’s image, in the likeness of the One who sings (Zeph 3:17), blows the trumpet (Zech. 9:14), created heavenly beings who are musical (Eze. 28:13), and who enjoys the songs of His saints (Psalm 118:14).