Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 363 · December 29
A New Song
“O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory.”
Among the rubbish heaps of the old town of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, a torn scrap of papyrus was found with musical notes written above the words. It dates from around the third century, and it is the oldest Christian hymn anyone has found with its tune still attached. Only part of it survives. In what remains, the singers praise the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In its day, somebody wrote that as a new song.
We have to admit that most of us have no new song. The psalm tells us to sing something new, and many of us are still singing only what we sang at nineteen. The reason has less to do with laziness than with having nothing new to sing about. A new song needs something to be new about, and the psalm names it: "for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory." If someone asked what God has done in the last twelve months that we did not already know about Him in our first year of believing, many of us would go quiet.
The psalm does not wait for our answer. It grows wider instead. "Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth." It calls for the harp, the trumpets and the cornet. Then it calls on things with no voice at all: "Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof." "Let the floods clap their hands." The singing happens on that scale because of what God's right hand and holy arm have already done. And the psalm ends by saying that He is coming "to judge the earth," which the sea and the hills seem to hear as good news.
The victory in this verse was not won by anyone who sings about it. God won it, and He will not take it back from you. New reasons to sing will reach your life this year, and they will come from Him, more than from your effort to feel more. When they come, you will not have to compose anything, because you can join a song God's people have been singing for centuries. May the Lord who has done marvellous things give you fresh reasons to praise Him, and may your voice join that old, new song this year.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 363 is Death Swallowed in Victory (Isaiah 25:8).