Does your church sing? Church as the body of Christ, as the structure of Truth and Love (see Colossians 1:18 and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 583), is always reflecting the all-harmonious nature of Being, God. God, Spirit, doesn’t create material vocal cords. If God created matter, He would be responsible for the suffering inherent in matter. But infinite Soul, God, creates each of us as His spiritual child, or expression, for the holy purpose of our “singing”—of our reflecting this perfect Being that can only be composed of good qualities.
In a more literal sense, the ancient Hebrews recognized the importance of singing and all sacred music as a way of affirming and celebrating the fundamental, undeniable presence of God. Psalms, the Hebrew songbook, stands as the longest book in the Bible. It’s also one of the most quoted Old Testament books in the New Testament. This shows that Jesus and the early Christians knew that songbook well. The Master and his disciples sang a hymn before Jesus went to the garden of Gethsemane prior to his being taken to be crucified (see Matthew 26:30). On the cross itself, Jesus voices words from Psalm 22, which starts with anguish and ends in a paean to God (see Matthew 27:46). Even the devil quotes the Psalms when tempting Jesus (see Matthew 4:6).
From the Song of Moses, to David playing the harp to calm Saul, to Paul and Silas singing at midnight when in shackles in prison, to the heavenly choir in Revelation, singing is not just a biblical theme, but a central theme of reality—of Church—itself (see Exodus 15:1–19; I Samuel 16:23; Acts 16:25; and Revelation 14:1–3).
