NOVEMBER 25 - For a Song

NOVEMBER 25 - For a Song     O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. — PSALM 51:15     I have this game. Well . . . really, it's more than a game. For me, it's serious fun. In my travels around the world, I will sometimes find myself in a great, cavernous hall or cathedral. If it's empty and no one is around, I will fill the place with music by singing one particular hymn — "Now Thank We All Our God" — as loud as I can. I think it's important to remind these great places of who designed them, who is King of their space, and that they are only great because God gave the ideas to the architects in the first place.     The first big, important place I remember singing this hymn was in a railway station at eleven o'clock at night with a few of my friends from high school choir. "Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices, / Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices. . . ." The second place was in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Then there was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, and Westminster Abbey in London. "Who from our mothers' arms, has blessed us on our way, / With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today." And just last fall when I toured the Sydney Opera House, someone said, "Hey, Joni, want to sing something?" I could think of no better song to fill the wide-open spaces of that world-renowned, acoustically perfect concert hall than to sing my signature hymn. Everywhere you and I go, everywhere we visit, every place, every square foot of ground, is territory we can claim for a song for the God of all nations.     Try it! The next time you're in a big empty building — or even the great cathedral out-of-doors, declare his praise out loud . . . in a psalm, a chorus, a hymn, or a shout!     Great God and Savior, may your praise be on my lips more and more as the days and weeks of this year slip by. _

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