Praise the Lord

 

“I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.” Psalms 104:33

There are birds singing outside this morning so loud that I can hear them clearly through the closed windows. Intrigued, I step out onto the balcony to see what is there, expecting to see a flock of winged singers in the garden bushes. Instead, I hear birdsong coming from only one place—the top of the hickory tree in my next door neighbor’s yard. There on the top of the tree sits a mockingbird, calling out the songs of the robins, sparrows, goldfinches, cardinals, crows, and all the other birds that visit in my garden.

Listen to a Mockingbird

The mockingbird trills the songs so loudly I cannot hear any other birds. I listen for a least ten minutes as he serenades me, drowning out all other garden noises. Suddenly, he takes flight, the melodious sound of his calls floating behind him as he dips over the garden. He swoops over the deck and takes up another perch on the chimney of my other neighbor and continues his song. The notes tumbling from him in a glorious jumble of tunes. For nearly 30 minutes the mockingbird poured out his beautiful melody across my garden, calling from the highest perches he could find.

Birds sing for a variety of reasons: to mark their territory, to advertise for a female, and to strengthen a bond between a mating pair. Bird calls, which are different than bird songs, are usually made up of short, simple sounds consisting of one or two syllables. Calls, communicate very different information than songs. Birds use calls to call their young to them, to signal to members of the flock when food has been found, to alert each other to the presence of predators, and migrating bird calls are used to help stragglers rejoin the flock.

But the most interesting birdsong, to me, is called “ecstasy birdsong.” Ecstasy birdsong is often sung from a high perch or while in flight. The mockingbird is one of the species that regularly indulges in this type of song.  It is believed that this type of song may be a form of emotional release. This morning, listening to the mockingbird sing, I could clearly hear the ecstasy in his song.

There’s a saying that goes “He who sings prays twice.”  As a singer, I understand this saying, because when my voice is lifted to God in some beautiful melody, I’m carried away to a place of praise that I can’t reach on my own. The melodious release of joy I feel when I sing praises to the Lord causes me to indulge in my own version of birdsong ecstasy. And what a joy that is to me, and to God.

God desires our praises and we should desire to praise him every day, every hour and every minute. And he doesn’t care whether we sing well or not. He just wants to hear from us. So, from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, let us praise God’s holy name.  Let us “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” (Psalms 100:1)

 

About the Author:

Multi-award winning author Catherine Castle loves writing, reading, traveling, singing, theatre, quilting and gardening. She’s a passionate gardener whose garden won a “Best Hillside Garden” award from the local gardening club. She writes sweet and inspirational romances. You can find her award-winning Soul Mate books The Nun and the Narc and A Groom for Mama, on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Follow her on Twitter @AuthorCCastle, FB or her blog.