Have you ever thought what the world would be like without music?
I’ve been looking back over the decades to those days when we were constantly on the road and have been reading notes from one particular trip on which I was particularly aware of the importance of music at every stage of the journey.

* airport public address systems and airplane intercoms
*earphoned passengers tapping their fingers, and a whistling airline steward
*watching members of a touring orchestra in the Geneva’s Cointrin airport carrying their instruments to a waiting airplane, heading for their next engagement
*the first thing my father asking when we arrived in Switzerland: “Did you bring the music tapes?”
*lunch at a friend’s house where we were asked to sing
*eating cheese fondue in a chalet restaurant up in the mountains where among the music playing was “Come ye Sinners Poor and Needy”
*three “Sermons in Song” over the next weekend at the USAF base in Lakenheath, England
*the singing London cabbie and the jogger running in Hyde Park to the rhythm of whatever was playing through his earphones
*the hotel porter handing us a guide to London theaters and of the 38 stage performances listed, 17 were musicals or operas
* and of course the music of God’s creation…everywhere, here on earth and across the universe.

Should this surprise us? Not really, as music plays such a significant role in God’s creation and is such an important part of the Holy Scriptures. What would God’s Word be without the Psalms, or the Levites, or the trumpet blasts of Jericho, or the singing of Paul and Silas at midnight, or the songs of Revelation?
What would the world be without Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” or Bach’s “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” or Rachmaninoff’s “2nd piano concerto” or Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy?” And what would it be like for us to be without “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” and “Amazing Grace?”
Thank God for the language of His creation; for the sound of His universe. Thank God for music. MUSIC does MATTER!