“The Lord your God is in your midst…he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will exult over you with loud singing”. These selected fragments from Zephaniah 3:17 were introduced to me some years ago by a seminary colleague. She loved the imagery of God exulting over us with loud singing. I was captivated by this imagery, too.

I don’t know Zephaniah very well, but I do know that the previous chapters are about judgment. I will gloss over that aspect, but I want to offer at least the option to hear and watch a brief explanation of the book from BibleProject so you can see that the joy in this passage is accentuated by less than desirable realities in previous chapters.

The message here is meant for a people, the community of God’s chosen people, but what if we’d be so bold as to personalize the verse? We are, after all, in the twenty-first century where we know how to make it all about us. How often do we think of God as singing over us loudly? I sure don’t think of God singing over me. Come to think of it, I don’t even imagine God singing over the larger church body. Seems that God would more likely lament/fume over us, but if we’re thinking along the lines of Zephaniah, then that has already happened in chapters 1 and 2. judgment has been threatened and then love is poured out. 

Isn’t that how it normally goes when we’re parents? We get angry, the child becomes meek and then we melt and explain why we are angry. Often the anger is out of fear or sadness. I think God is doing that here, too. Ideally, a parental figure brings on a sense of security and love – even if it is done imperfectly.

Ok, I don’t mean for this post to become a sermon – especially one that I’m guessing everyone has heard. I refer also to this passage because I’ve had a song for our little one that I wrote while she was in utero. I refer to this passage because I sing my song over her. I don’t sing it loudly, but I do sing it  with joy. The idea of a song for our child was gleaned from an older sister who sang a sweet, little song for her daughter. After that another sister took that idea and created songs for both her children. I decided I shouldn’t break the tradition. 

The song came to me in snippets. I think I started the song through inspiration from Isaiah 43:2, which reads, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” I was thinking about climate change. The tune, I believe, started in the car with words about waves lapping. She has ancestry roots in Scotland where I did a few months of volunteer work and where I really enjoyed being close to the water. More words came to me at night when I was thinking about the murder of George Floyd. Words came to me in the kitchen while I was trying to fill in the blanks of the song. I thought about the Holy Spirit and about breath – George Floyd’s breath, human breath, the breath of God, the Holy Spirit breathing on us. While the world was falling apart I was forming a song.

Sharing the song lyrics or melody is too intimate and personal for this setting, but I’ll say that I recorded the melody on my phone. Then I recorded myself on my computer singing harmony with the phone. Then I played the recording of my two voices from the computer to record a third harmony, which was recorded again on my phone. The result? A harmonized version of the song in just my voice. I played that song to her while she was in the womb and I had my husband play the song as soon as our daughter was born. Holy moment? Yes.

Holy and bitter-sweet. Our little girl looked so badly like she wanted to cry, but she was also trying to listen to the voice she had been hearing for weeks now. She was listening to that song, which I played when I was still and resting. When we played the song for her after she was born I didn’t cry. I was still and held her while we listened to my voice singing. It’s hard to see a fresh infant trying to hold it together. We both did pretty well holding it together, but the song made the midwife cry!

I wanted to bless her with this song that I’d sing over her. And I do. I mean, I sing over her and I hope the song blesses her. Ideally she’ll carry this song with her into life. I want her to pull it out when life gets hard. When I die, I want her to sing it to herself. If she has children, I want her to sing it to them. 

We talk about traditions in our family. They’re important. We also struggle to keep some, but I think we’ve also started a new family tradition – finding a song for our children. I’ll also just take a moment to say that maybe others should consider this practice. Find a song for your child. It doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to be deep. It doesn’t need to rhyme. It just has to be something specifically for them. It should make them feel loved and seen. It’s never too late to come up with a simple song for the child you love. So go ahead. Write the song. Sing your child’s song.