I Caught The Whole Line Of The Song

You stopped in the hallway with a towel in your hand because a line of a song opened.

You have known that song since you were about eleven. It has been at every gathering you have been to, it was playing in the car on the way to two funerals, and you can sing the whole of it and could before you had any idea what one word of it meant.

And on Thursday morning it was coming out of the other room and a line went past and the meaning came with it.

You stood there. Towel in your hand. About fifteen seconds, and then you carried on getting ready for work.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

That was not a small thing and I am not going to help you make it one.

Because I suspect you have already had a go. It was one line. It was a line you had probably half worked out years ago without noticing. You have heard it ten thousand times, so of course something came through eventually.

So I am not going to join in with that. Let me show you what the psalm does with a song.

He hath put a new song in my mouth

There is a line in Psalm forty about a song arriving in somebody.

And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God. (Psalm 40:3, King James Version)

A new song in my mouth.

Now stay on the location, because it is odd and it is the reason this verse is here. Not a new song in his ears, which is where a song usually starts. Not on a page in front of him. In his mouth, which is where a song has ended up rather than where it begins.

The psalm records the moment a thing arrives at the place it can be used from.

You have had something arrive somewhere it can be used rather than somewhere it can be admired, and a thing in the mouth has never once been the same as a thing in the ear. Psalm 40:3 names the mouth as the destination, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing in a hallway with a man holding a towel.

Now notice what the psalm says about the song being new.

It is called new, and yet the God being praised is not new and the reason for the praising is not new. What is new is that it is in him. The novelty is entirely about location rather than about content.

That is exactly your Thursday. The song is thirty years old. The line has been the same line the whole time. What is new is that it is inside you rather than going past you.

You have had something become new without anything about it changing, and a thing that moves inward has never once had to be a different thing to be new. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves a thing from around a man to inside him, and Psalm 40:3 calls it new because of where it is rather than what it is.

And here is the third thing, which is what the verse says happens next.

Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD. Other people are in that sentence. A thing that happened inside one man in one moment is described as having a reach beyond him, and the psalm does not treat that as an exaggeration.

You have had something happen that has never once been contained in the fifteen seconds it took. Psalm 40:3 puts other people on the far end of one man's private moment, and the Spirit of God is the one who knows how far a hallway on a Thursday goes.

What a song does that a book cannot

Here is the practical half, and it is about why it was a song rather than a sentence.

A song has been in you for thirty years already, and this is the thing to see.

You learned that melody before you had any vocabulary. You learned the rhythm of those lines, the places where a phrase breaks, the sounds that come in a particular order, and all of it went in as music rather than as language, and all of it went in at eleven years old.

So the shape was already installed. What arrived on Thursday was only the meaning, dropping into a slot that had been sitting ready for thirty years.

You have had a shape waiting for meaning for thirty years, and a thing that only needed one half has never once been the same amount of work as one that needed both. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what went into a boy at a gathering at eleven, and Psalm 40:3 puts a song into the mouth rather than into the ear.

Now here is what that means about the rest of that song, and it is the practical payoff.

The other lines are sitting in exactly the same condition. Every one of them has the shape already installed and is missing only the meaning, which means they will open faster than anything you could learn from a page, and they will open in the same way, without warning, in hallways.

You are not starting on that song. You are finishing it.

You have a song most of the way finished rather than one to begin, and a line that opens on its own has never once been the first one to do it. Psalm 40:3 calls it new for where it is rather than for what it is, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows how many lines of that song are waiting.

And here is the thing about it being in a hallway, said plainly.

Nothing about that was wasted for happening at an inconvenient moment. It opened in the middle of getting ready for work, and those fifteen seconds were not less than they would have been in a chair with a cup of tea.

There is no correct setting for a thing like that. It arrives where it arrives.

You have never once needed the right room for something to count in it, and a hallway has never once been a lesser place than a quiet one. The Spirit of God is the one who was in a hallway on a Thursday morning, and the written word puts a song into a mouth without specifying where the man was standing.

Write it down and keep the paper

So here is the assignment, and it will take about four minutes.

Write down the sentence you understood and keep the paper.

The line. In the language it is sung in, as near as you can get it, and then underneath it write what it means in English.

On paper, in your own hand. Not in a phone and not in the notes on a screen.

You have one line to write in two languages, and a thing written on paper has never once been as easy to explain away as one in a head. Psalm 40:3 puts a song somewhere it can be produced rather than only heard, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man at a table with a pen.

And here is the second half, which is the part that will surprise you.

Write the next line underneath too, in the language, even though you do not know what it means.

Because the sound of it has been in you for thirty years. Writing it down as sound, with a space under it, makes it a question rather than a blank, and the answer will arrive one day the same way the first one did, in a hallway, and you will have somewhere to put it.

Then stop, because one piece of paper is the assignment and nothing else is asked of you today.

You have permission to write down a line you do not understand yet, and a space left waiting has never once been the same as a thing nobody expects. The Spirit of God is the one who will be in the hallway on the day the next line opens, and Psalm 40:3 puts other people on the far end of one man's moment.