Music and Scripture – Together!

My God time usually involves scripture and it usually involves music. But just this morning it occurred to me that it could involve something new: music about scripture!

If you look for it, there’s actually a lot of music out there that’s directly about various bits of scripture. Psalms are pretty popular but you’ll find music for plenty of other passages in the Bible. Some are just direct “quotes” of scripture, and some are “interpretations” of a passage. You can find a lot of different things if you look. Apple Music appears to have over 100 songs about Psalm 73!

Lately I’ve been listening to Poor Bishop Hooper frequently. [Apple Music] [Spotify] They have a song for all 150 Psalms [My Apple Music play list with all of them]. And for Psalm 119 they have 22 different songs, one for each section. These songs contain bits and pieces of the scripture, usually from the main themes of each Psalm. They also have albums for a good bit of the gospels. The gospel music is much more on the interpretation side, telling the story of the chosen section. My favorite is The Nazarene [Apple Music] [Spotify]. The song is sung as though the singer is Jesus’s earthly father Joseph and it expresses some interesting sentiments that make sense for Joseph, but which most of us have probably never thought of before for this tiny section of scripture.

And that’s why I bring this up. Read some scripture and then listen to a song based on it, or the other way around. Contemplate what’s going on in the scripture and in the song. Does the song bring out anything new in your mind or in your emotions? Music can be a great emotion generator, and that can be a gateway to new insights and new connections with God. So bring scripture and music together and see where God leads you.