Imagine a time when you were last so happy and joyful.
How did you react? Did you, like the woman in our next story, burst into jubilant song?
Today, singing for joy isn't something that we do very regularly or even come across all that often.
But in this next video, we are going to explore the story of one woman who did just that.
This is Wesley Memorial Church in Oxford. John and Charles Wesley
founded Methodism and between them penned over 10,000 hymns, many of which we still sing today
such as ‘love divine, all love’s excelling’.
One of the many things I missed during the Covid pandemic was being able to sing
together at church on a Sunday.
There is enormous power in song, as testified by oppressed people throughout the ages,
and so it is not surprising that the first thing the Israelites do when they reach their freedom is to sing.
It is perhaps more surprising though to hear that the first worship leader mentioned in the Bible is a woman.
Miriam.
One of the overarching narratives of the Judeo-Christian faith
is that of the ‘exodus’. The story of how God leads people out of captivity and into freedom.
It’s a story that is repeated in many different ways throughout scripture,
from the release of the Israelites enslaved in Egypt under the Pharaohs, to the liberation from
persecution in the time of Esther and to the freedom of all people through Jesus Christ.
Miriam was the older sister of Moses. She is named in the Bible as one of the five
female Old Testament prophets. It is likely that she was the
one who had watched over the baby Moses when he was vulnerable and in the bulrushes.
After Moses grew up, he was called by God, alongside their brother Aaron,
to confront Pharaoh and repeatedly ask for freedom for the Israelites.
It took ten plagues for the Egyptian ruler to eventually relent, and even then he changed
his mind and pursued them as they escaped through the parting waters of the Red Sea.
The first thing that the Israelites did when they reached land was to sing God’s praise:
it was a joyous song of triumph and liberation. And the women are led in worship and dancing
by Miriam who, the Bible says ‘took a tambourine in her hand’. It is remarkable that when Miriam and the women
fled Egypt, when they didn’t even have time to wait for their bread to rise,
they remembered to take their musical instruments.
I love that! It’s as if they knew that one day there would be a time
to celebrate again, and they wanted to make sure that they were ready.
I also love that even though they had another 40 years of wandering ahead of them,
they still knew the importance of praise and worship.
Whatever our situation is right now, there is always something to be thankful for,
even if it's just that we can sing and lift our voices in praise.
God loves to hear our praises and songs for him – whether we can hold a note or not!
How does the story of Miriam make you feel about praise and worship?