"As I hear heaven's melody, As You begin to..."

Zephaniah 3:17 -- "The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you with his love; he will exult over you with loud singing." (ESV)

The other day I was walking across campus when I saw a rare sight. A young looking man was pushing a stroller with a sleeping baby in it. The baby was probably around a year old or so, and the dad looked like he could have been my age.

As they approached while I was walking to the SM building, I could hear some hip hop music getting progressively louder as I walked. Come to find out, it was the dad's cd player that was sitting on the top of the stroller that was blaring out a song that uttered a profanity every other word. In the moment I was disgusted, what kind of a dad would do that? Let the kid sleep! Or at least play something more calming.

I've heard it said that if a baby listens to Mozart or some kind of classical music when they are young that they will grow up smarter. Don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing beneficial about the song that father was letting sing out to the TCC campus listen to...I wonder how that will affect that child in the future.

But then it hit me...What is my father singing over me? Another version of that verse says that God "will rejoice over you with singing" (NIV). He rejoices? Over me? That should change something in me. My response should be out of adoration and fulfillment of that joy.

My sister was in a musical recently, "The Secret Garden". It was pretty good, my sister was fantastic (as usual), but there was one scene that pulled on me in particular. If you don't know the story, you should go see the musical or rent the movie, but one of the veins of the story is about a crippled boy, Colin, and his father, Archibald Craven, who can't stand to be with his son because he reminds him of his deceased wife who died in labor.

One scene pulled on my heart: Colin was sleeping, and Archibald Craven snuck into his room and began to sing a fairy tale story to him. A typical story about a knight in shining armor, a dragon, damsel in destress, etc. And you know what happened? Colin dreamed about it, and it gave him hope, and changed his outlook on his seemingly hopeless life as an invalid and a forgotten son.

So what is my Father, our Father, singing over me, singing over us? He rejoices over us. He showers His love on us. His love is never ending. It has no bounds. Nothing we can do can separate us from that love. It is unconditional, it has no conditions. God does not expect us to do anything to win his love. We can't.

He brings us peace. God frequently speaks to me in dreams, and although sometimes those dreams can shake me up a bit and be a jolting warning of things to come, there is always peace. God is a God of peace. That's one good litmus test as to who is speaking to you, who is speaking over you. Satan will never, ever give you peace. Not true peace. Complacency, sure. Apathy, absolutely. But that is not true peace.

And what Satan speaks to you will never agree with the Word of God. That is another way that we can know who is speaking to us: God is always in alignment with Truth, His Word. He is Truth, and Truth is in His nature. Satan will not, truth scares him and breaks the holds he has on our lives.

So I ask you: What is God been singing over you? What has He been speaking to you about? And more importantly, how will you respond when you "wake up"?