Often when I write something – I go back and read it and wonder to myself – what authority do I have to make statements like these? Everytime I have that experience – with a sigh of relief and great joy – I remember the words that Thomas L. Are used to open the concluding section of his book Faithsong: A New Look at the Ministry of Music*:

“The song we sing is good. It is called grace.

I have often felt that if I just had five days, or even five hours in which I were free to listen, God would surely speak to me. It would have been important to me if he had done so. I would have listened and now I would have been able to say, ‘Hear the new word from God.’

However, nothing like that has happened. I have had many hours free. God has had ample time to tell me anything he wants me to know. I have been more quiet than usual and God has been terribly silent.

This disappoints me. His silence has pushed me back to the old recourses of friends, books, and memories that have always sustained me. I won’t give an authoritative new chapter but will reaffirm the same old word I have already said, done, thought, experienced, and half-believed all my life.

For the prophets, the only requirement for writing a book was to begin by saying, ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ Later the church fathers would write: ‘The church has always said. . . .’ But the most I can say about the gospel we sing is, ‘It seems to me.’ I can’t say, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ because he doesn’t alwyas speak to me. Nor can I say, ‘The church has always said . . ,’ for the church has seldom had enough unity to have always said anything. The most honest thing I can say is, ‘It seems to me.'” (93)

And then – just a few paragraphs later – Are concludes his brilliant volume with these words:

“This love of God created the church as a community of persons who love God and one another. This free love, from God, for God, and among us is the foundation for the choir’s song, and the choir’s practice. The song is good. It is about grace.” (96)

Thanks be to God!

*Are, Thomas L. Faithsong: A New Look at the Ministry of Music. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1981.