Melody is the literature of the heart, for it penetrates there where words fail to enter.
LD
It unites us in some supernatural ways and helps to understand each other where language errs to assist.
There is a scene from the movie Shawshank Redemption when the main actor Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) plays classical music that is broadcast throughout the prison via the public address system for all the prisoners to hear. His friend Red (Morgan Freeman) describes that moment like this:
“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”
When we make music for God (v2) we are in fact inviting freedom to enter our dark and closed spaces. For praise is must just beautiful music, it’s the language of freedom. We magnify God and everything else shrinks at his amplification.
Music… will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
( See Acts 16:25-26, Ephesians 5:19, 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18)