I look into the skies and the quality of illumination makes it real to me that there is, indeed, a sheet music of praise stretched across the heavens at all times. It is a song that I hear even on the grayest of days. The Scripture says it this way in Isaiah 49:13:

“Shout for joy, O heavens; rejoice, O earth; burst into song, O mountains! For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on His afflicted ones.”

The twisting reach of a long branch has its movement set to the classical music of the ballet as it spirals its way skyward--a pointer to the One who fashioned the tree’s pose. The wind in the tops of the blooms rustling in a garden is the jazz of heavens spontaneity to improvise with fragrant grace. The crash of the waves along the shore is a great echoing round, as it then pulls back over the rocks, singing the movements of the tides with the gravity of His love for us. The mountains have the might to carry their thanksgiving in operatic arias that make us exclaim over their steep reaches to glory. The streams bubble with the sweet high notes of Children of God at play. The deserts sing acappella with the sparseness of their resources, and the surety of their singular stunning voice. The birds need no metaphor for their praise as they unsparingly set the winds and the trees into great anthems of joy daily. And the stars shimmer with the notes that light the theater of our nights.

The image I posted here was a day of gloominess--both in the weather, and in my heart. When I saw the sheet music stretched out across the firmament, with the leafy notes upon the lines, I was filled with wonder over what the song would sound like. I couldn’t translate its notation into music. I am not trained, and perhaps it was too rarefied a song for me to read and sing. When I found the passage quoted above from Isaiah 43, I realized that this song was too precious for me to do anything but to receive it.

It told me that the heavens and the earth have this music from the Lord for our comfort. The trees, flowers, waves, mountains, streams, deserts, birds, stars, and all that He has made, are a gospel choir poised to be lifters of our heads. They sing to cheer us and to assure us that He has compassion upon the afflictions that wound us. They sing while we cry to keep His profound care and comfort ever reliably before us. If we listen they will surround us in lullabies even in the darkest part of any night.

If we look up in the confidence of His covering over us, the sheet music will be clearly unfurled with the music written precisely for our condition. And not even the Meadow Lark’s beautiful song could utter one note that would contradict His song of love to be with us, and to rock us with all of Heaven’s sweet rhythms until we can stand again with our own song of praise renewed and revived.

The creation is beautiful to behold, but hearing its music makes me know that it is founded upon praise that comes from the very first when the “Spirit of God hovered over the waters” (Genesis 1:2b) with His elegant musical whirring—the prelude to all of creation.