Keep Singing

One of my favorite worship songs is "How Can I Keep from Singing," by Chris Tomlin. I've been trying to get our worship team at church, which I am a part of, to try it one Sunday. So far, they haven't gotten around to it, so this week I decided that maybe if I did an arrangement of it for flute, piano and vocals, that would prompt them.

I am by no means a professional arranger, but I came up with something that I thought was pretty good, 8 pages long on my Finale software. It took me about 15 hours to do, over the course of several days. I listened to it over and over, trying to get it just perfect. About the time I did (at least by my standards), something happened. I still don't know exactly what, but my music was gone, all but the first page. I couldn't see it on the screen, and I couldn't pull up the file. I found a backup on my hard drive, but I couldn't pull that up either.

Needless to say, I was not happy about this. Devastated would be a better word. But then God reminded me of the lyrics to the song: "I know I am loved by the King, and it makes my heart want to sing," and "I can sing in the troubled times . . ." It is about praising God in everything, good and bad, because He loves us. He has saved me, and I will live eternally with Him, and that is far more important than any earthly thing. Even 15 hours of work being lost.

So I kept singing.

A couple of hours later, I decided to go ahead and try to recreate it as well as I could while it was still fresh on my mind. I pulled up what was left of it, and behold, it was all there! All 8 pages!

I can't explain what happened, but I know God was teaching me to praise Him even in hard times. They don't always turn out the way this did, but He always uses them to work together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28)!