A New Song

Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head? For whatever reason, you find yourself singing or humming a tune over and over again throughout the day. You may be engaged in another activity, but you keep replaying the song over and over again in your head. Often, you are not even conscious that you are singing it or humming it. Such songs are often called earworms. An earworm, sometimes referred to as a brainworm, sticky music, stuck song syndrome, or, most commonly after earworms, Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI), is a catchy and/or memorable piece of music or saying that continuously occupies a person’s mind even after it is no longer being played or spoken about.

Now there are a variety of solutions suggested to remove the song that is stuck in your head, including: chewing gum, listening to the entire song to break the loop, doing a puzzle, or stop fighting it, and it will eventually fade away. However, as most would admit, it is not always easy to get the song out of your head.

In the book of Psalms, the songbook of the Bible, we read,“I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.  He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.” (Psalm 40: 1-3) The psalmist describes a difficult time in their life when the only song in their life was one of grief, sorrow, suffering, and despair. Whatever brought upon these feelings had caused the psalmist to feel stuck. At one time or another, every individual feels as though they are stuck in life in a difficult situation. Each day in this “stuckness,” we repeat the same sad song over and over in our heads. We may wonder if the melody will ever change in our lives or if we will live out this tune for the rest of our days. At times like this, we can feel hopeless. 

However, the psalmist confesses that God lifted him out of this difficult time, drew him upout of his “stuckness” and put a new song in his mouth. The sad song would give way to a song of hope and joy. The repetitive tune of despair would be broken, and God would provide the psalmist a new song to live by. As Christians, this new song of God is offered to us in Jesus Christ. In Jesus, God delivered the world a new tune to live by. Rather than having a song of sin and death stuck in our heads, God offered a new tune of grace and life. Grace and life would then become the lyrics of our lives. This new melody would finally place within us the song we were created to sing. 

We don’t have to settle for the song that we are currently singing. God offers to us a new song, created in God’s own heart and sung perfectly in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the song. The song of Jesus is ultimately the one that will make a difference in our lives by healing our past, sustaining the present, and instilling in us a future with hope.