A New Song

I have a plant that I always seem to forget to water.  When its leaves are drooping over the side of the pot, I rush to get water.  It's plant 911.  


Waking up this morning, I found my soul like that plant.  Discouraged, tired, dried out, droopy.  The alarm announced 5am, and I contemplated staying in bed.  I climbed down the stairs and sat with my Bible, unopened, next to me.  My list of complaints and irritations poured forth in fragments and run-ons.  

Psalm 149:1

Hallelujah!

Sing to the Lord a new song,

His praise in the assembly of the godly.

I wasn't in the mood to sing this morning.  What in the world does it mean to sing a new song anyway?  I looked at my notes: "A new song usually denotes dynamic intervention not previously experienced...."  I saw a reference to Isaiah 42:10, another verse that tells us to sing a new song to the Lord.  The note on that verse states: "The expression 'new song' occurs only in Isaiah, Psalms and Revelation.  With only minor exceptions, 'new song' is associated, as here, with the image of God as a warrior.  It is the warrior who causes all things to become new through His refining warfare."

Though there is the thing that brings me discouragement...the prayer that seems to not have an answer...the scar that seems to reopen...the thing that wants to pin me down and suffocate my very soul...  I am to sing a new song to the Lord!  Victory does not depend on me.  There's a warrior who makes all things new.  Even the thing I'm most tired of that seems it will never change...there's a warrior who is bringing dynamic intervention that I have not yet experienced.  I cannot see it with my eyes.  It is grasped only through faith in His faithfulness.  It is the calm assurance that the Maker of the Heavens, the One who gave the ocean its boundaries and fixed the dimensions of the universe, will indeed bring victory to those who fear Him and put their hope in Him.

In Job 38:25-28, He says:

Who cuts a channel

for the flooding rain

or clears the way for lightning

to bring rain on an uninhabited land,

on a desert with no human life,

to satisfy the parched wasteland

and cause the grass to sprout?

Does the rain have a father?

who fathered the drops of dew?

It is HE ALONE who sends the rains to satisfy the parched wasteland and cause the grass to sprout.  The victory, the miracle, the answer already exist IN HIM.  So, I cover myself with the cloak of His grace and settle into Him.  And, with eyes of faith that see a victory that is still over the horizon, I sing a new song to Him...complaints turn to praise...a new melody flows out through my mouth and soul.

The parched land awaits the rain in expectation.  Without a single cloud in the sky, umbrellas are drawn...knowing the first drop is on it's way.

SING A NEW SONG TO THE LORD!