Music Helps Us Remember

Think of various commercials where a jingle gets stuck in your head. Or try to say the ABCs without singing the alphabet jingles. Music helps us recite and remember things that are important. “Our theology is something that we’ve sung. And we’ve sung it in a way to help us understand it and to help us feel and experience it at the same time. So it’s one thing for me to say, for example, incarnational theology. It’s another thing for me to say ‘Hark, the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king’” (Alfred T. Day III, quoted in Charles Wesley’s Gift of Music,” UMC, December 2015, https://www.umc.org/en/content/charles-wesleys-gift-of-music). “As such, it reflects the worship of the early church. The themes are far from abstract, removed, theological affirmations about Jesus. They are living, vibrant, essential elements that found a significant place in regular worship. The criteria for determining the presence of hymns includes lyrical style and linguistic abnormalities” (Richard R. Melick, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, The New American Commentary 32 [Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1991], 175).