The Songs of Heaven

Many years ago I had the opportunity to work with an old strawberry farmer named Clarence Northey who lived on a 100-acre parcel of land near Buckhorn, Ontario. It was a great job that not only kept me outside for most of the summer, but also exposed me to a man who possessed a great deal of godly wisdom and some very exciting and interesting stories. One of those stories dealt with how he first heard the “songs of heaven” when he came down with pneumonia as a young boy. In those early days of his boyhood, the highway to Buckhorn was just two tire tracks running through the bush, so that when someone got sick, most of the time they simply stayed at home and hoped for the best. In this case, whenever Clarence fell asleep due to his high fever, he actually stopped breathing. It was then that his mother would shake him and somehow his breathing would resume.

On one of these occasions when Clarence fell asleep and stopped breathing, he said that he went to a place where he heard music that was so wonderful, and so indescribable that he asked his mother not to wake him the next time he fell asleep, for he wanted to go again to the place where he had heard the heavenly music. Of course, Clarence finally got better and grew up to eventually buy his own farm, but the memory of those “songs of heaven” never left him. Interestingly, it was not until the mid 1970s that he finally heard the music once again. Can you guess where that might have been? Well, it was during a time in a meeting when he heard what we have come to call “singing in the spirit.” He told me that the singing he heard in those early days of the charismatic renewal was the closest he had ever come to what he heard when he stopped breathing as a young boy.

It was the apostle Paul who said, “I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind” (1 Cor. 14:15, NIV). Here is our link to all that is being enjoyed around God’s throne in heaven, for as we lift up our voices and let the Spirit lead us we will experience a release to say – and to sing – all those things that are deeply held in God’s heart.