Make a Joyful Noise

I have been doing a lot of thinking about my Dad lately. Even though he passed away in 1992 he is still with me in lots of different ways. For example, I have his voice and his laugh. When Daddy laughed, you could hear it all over the church. His voice and his laughter just carried for miles. I have the same voice. When I was teaching, the teachers around me would make me shut my door because I was "disturbing" their class. You know, now that I mention it, I don't think I ever closed MY door. I hate closed doors. They are just so.....closed. I do remember a lot of door slamming all around me. Oh well, I knew MY kids could hear me if the whole hall could hear me.

I did not, however, inherit my daddy's singing voice. I have a fairly decent, though untrained, second soprano voice that is actually good enough to be allowed into a VOLUNTEER choir, though once when I was 15 and my voice was changing, I was actually asked to leave a "volunteer" choir, but that's another story for another time.

Daddy, on the other hand, had only two notes and both of them were wrong. That never stopped him though. When there was Men's Choir Sunday, Daddy was up there with the best of them. The best part was that you could hear him above all the other singers because Daddy was not afraid to sing as loud as he talked and laughed, much to my chagrin when I became a teenager. He would sing to the Lord just as loud as he yelled at the television while watching his favorite teams, the Cleveland Browns and anyone who played against the 49'ers.

Daddy used to say that God says ,"to make a joyful noise and he could make as much noise as anybody." You know, he was right. I look around on Sunday and I see so many people not singing. They just stand there instead of praising God with all their heart. It doesn't matter whether or not you can carry a tune in a bucket. What matters is that you SING.

Daddy proved to me that EVERYONE can sing. It may not be pretty, but we can sing and in doing so, we offer up praise to God for all He has given us.

You know, I think I could sing the praises of someone who sacrificed His only Son, His only Child, for me. And I wouldn't care if it was pretty, because it was necessary.

This Sunday let's try to "make a joyful noise" when we sing the choruses and hymns. I know it would make Daddy and all like him proud.