Theologian Karl Barth and Trappist monk Thomas Merton had an ongoing argument over whose music is played in heaven.  Barth insisted upon Mozart, and Merton backed Bach.  They finally came to an amicable compromise summed up in a quote from Barth: 

   In Heaven, when God is with the heavenly host, they play Mozart;  when God is absent, they play Bach.

   Whenever we worship, God is indeed with us, and our worship mood must reflect that reality.  God’s nearness is comforts us, but not necessarily so;  it can trouble us as well.  

An anonymous poet wrote: 

    We pray that our prayers should have power

    To bring comforts, the greatest of which must be

    To keep the Lord God in His Heaven above

     Leaving us to our own will, most free. 

What greater comfort to our ways could we ask than that we simply be left undisturbed? 

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We hold our own favorite ideas of what is good—usually, what is good for us—but our ideas of good must always be surrendered to the good that God chooses for us.  

   God has a plan for us as a people and as individual Christians.  Our walk in faith is a matter of daily adjusting ourselves to his plan for us.  God’s providence is perfect, and we choose either to live aligned with his providence or up-and-against it.  

   If we think of God as being “far away” or “off in his Heaven,” we will pray differently, think differently, and worship differently than when we think of him as being immediately near.

If God is distant, like the master who “goes abroad” in the parable of the talents, then we are simply left to our own plans and devices until he returns.  

   Let us always be mindful then, that he is near, and what a difference that makes in our discipleship.  The nearness of God bears a mark on our prayers, our decisions, and our worship.  Our prayers are expressed through the language of intimacy in the tones of two or more who are closer than brothers or sisters.  Our decisions are no longer a matter of personal wisdom but of divine guidance discerned through prayer.   Our worship is less a collection of statements about God than a celebration of his immediate presence—God with us.  

    Our songs of praise are sometimes a proclamation about God: A mighty fortress is our God,  a bulwark never failing; and other times an address to God: Lord, you are more precious than silver.   In the first case, our songs are addressed to one another or even to the world.  To whom are we singing when we sing They will know we are Christians by our love?  We address one another.  Even the Doxology (Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below…) sounds more like an invitation to praise than praise per se. We are talking to each other or to the world, and the correct response is, “Yes, great idea—let’s do praise him!”

Alternately, we address God directly: “I love you Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you,” or “ Holy, Holy, Holy. . .all the saints adore Thee,” or “How great Thou art”—all within which we address God directly. 

As all prayer and praise must be God-ward or else we are just talking to each other about how much we like to praise God.    There is certainly room for both kinds of song.  We need to be proclaimers of the mighty works of God just as we need to address God directly with praise.  If we emphasize proclamation alone, we tend towards a self-congratulatory worship style, saying in  effect:  “Oh how we love Jesus. Aren’t we terrific!”  To emphasize praise alone does no real harm, but to do so risks the loss of real depth in our proclamation.  As one lover-and-critic of praise music put it, “Praise music is four notes, three words, and thirty minutes long.” Even so, if it addresses God with heartfelt praise, it is most exactly like the music of heaven itself.  

For anyone bothered by the music being “too repetitious” or the lyrics “too insubstantial,”  I would quickly encourage you to listen again to the final chorus of Handel’s Messiah. 

    The eternal songs of heaven must begin with us, here and now, for God is indeed with us.