Reflections on God's Word

5 September 2026

I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the LORD.
Psalm 104:33–34 NIV

I am not a singing gal. My mom forced me to take weekly piano lessons for ten years. Practicing regularly was an afterthought for me, leading to shame when my piano teacher would arrive and find me unprepared.

Nowadays when I read the many verses in the Psalms—and throughout Paul’s letters—encouraging us to sing our praises to God, I feel troubled. Of course, I join in with others when I am in church. But that is about the only time I sing.

When I am in the car, exercising, or cooking, I default to podcasts or the audio of YouTube videos. This morning, as I puzzled through these two verses in Psalm 104, I wondered, “Is there something wrong with me?”

Nosing around the Hebrew, I discovered something interesting. While modern translations understand the first verb as “to sing,” older translators sometimes connected the Hebrew form with another root meaning “to behold” or “to look upon.” In fact, in Job 36:24, the King James Version uses “behold” where most modern translations use “sing.”

That caught my attention. Behold. Now that is something I try to do throughout the day. I try to remember to raise my eyes and turn my attention to God.

And then there is the second part of our passage: May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the LORD.  I find it easy to meditate on truths about our God as I focus on Him.

Okay, maybe there is a place for gals like me who, although we enjoy listening to music occasionally, do not give it regular space in our lives.

We non-singers can still  lift our voices and join in with others during corporate worship, but in private we can always be seeking, pondering, chattering to, and praising God all day long.