Paraphrase based upon Psalm 147:1-11, 20c

"Sing, with All of Your Heart..." 
copyright 2011, C. Schroeder
All rights reserved.

It is good to pull out the guitar, or sit down at the piano, or simply sing in the shower, giving praise to God, whose grace extends to all.  It is appropriate to sing with all of our hearts. 

The Eternal One builds up the Holy City, and gathers home all of the outcasts, the misfits, the broken hearted and wounded.  And though broken hearts open us to more of love, God knows we are human and fragile, and sees to our pain, with compassion and tenderness.

God decides just how many stars are swirling in all of those galaxies in our universe and far beyond.  Every star that sings in the night sky, is known and named and seen by our God. 

Wonderfully, marvelously, immeasurably awesome and grand is our God.  Wall street tycoons and the wealthiest of the 1% have nothing in comparison to the abundant power of this One who sees and knows and loves us all.

Those of us who have been door mats in our lives, stepped on, spit upon, and treated with hatred, will be lifted up with honor and love.  And those of us who have acted wickedly, cruelly to our fellow human beings, will fall on our faces at God's feet, weeping with remorse.

And so we sing, with deep gratitude in our hearts, we lift up our music to God, in many ways, on instruments, on typewriters, in soft lullabies to a child, with hammers that build housing for the poor, with hands that knead the bread in a soup kitchen, or touch the untouched, the elders who have been forgotten, and the people dying of AIDS.  We sing as we care for those with Down Syndrome, those the world calls "developmentally disabled", but who know so much more than we do about acceptance and loving, reaching us and teaching us to open our hearts to love in bigger ways.  We sing, calling out orders in a diner, filled with hungry people, waiting to be served.  The music rises on wings, reaching the ears and the heart of our Beloved.

Look at the sky and its clouds, look at the beauty of the rain we in the desert so deperately need, and those in the rainforest take for granted.  Look at the grasses and the wildflowers, the color of all creation.  God gives food to the ravens and the robins, to the whale and the dolphins and the minnows, to the dove and the eagle, to the wolf and the rabbits, to the sheep and the mountain lions.  God's delight isn't in what we consider perfection:  the strength of the horse, or the great speed of a runner.  God's great pleasure is in those of us who love and respect the ways of fairness, of mercy, of love...The Holy One's great pleasure and Glory is in those of us who Love God. 

Praise to the One whose infinite wisdom and grace is far beyond our finite understanding.