Religion in Daily Life

 © By the Rev. Edward Chinn, D.Min.

http://www.allsaintstorresdale.org

A young Arab boy walked his village street playing a flute. He had made the flute from an old gun barrel. He found the gun on the nearby battlefield of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In late 1947, the UN planned to divide the country into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews agreed with the plan; the Arabs did not. Israel came into existence on May 14, 1948. The next day five Arab nations attacked Israel. From the remnants of that storm of war, this Arab boy had transformed a weapon of destruction into an instrument of music. “You will be as happy as those who walk to the music of flutes on their way to the Temple” (Isaiah 30:29)

A German baron once dreamed of getting music from the storm. He stretched several wires side by side between two towers of his castle. The baron hoped to create a musical instrument that makes beautiful sounds when air blows across its strings. This is called an “Aeolian Harp.” When he finished stringing the wires, he waited. In the still air there was no sound. As gentle breezes blew, the baron heard faint music from his huge harp. But it was only when the great winds of winter blew across those wires that the baron succeeded in getting music from the storm.

In 1861 Julia Ward Howe and her husband Samuel, a physician, moved from Boston to Washington, D.C. Julia watched as preparations were made for war between the northern and the southern states. She heard the Union soldiers outside Washington singing the popular song, “John Brown’s Body.” This song was named for an abolitionist who was hanged for his efforts to free the slaves. Julia’s former Boston pastor, who was visiting her, said to her, “Why don’t you write some decent words for that tune.” Before dawn the next morning, Julia sprang from her bed and got music from the gathering storm of war as she wrote the words of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

In 1918 an American soldier named Irving Berlin wrote an anthem for a musical review he was producing at Camp Upton in Yaphank, Long Island. He called the musical review Yip! Yip! Yaphank! He decided to pull the anthem from the show and filed it away for 20 years. As another war seemed close, Irving Berlin took that old anthem and offered it to Kate Smith for her 1938 Armistice Day radio show. Kate Smith sang,

“While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,

Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free,

Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,

As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.

God bless America,

Land that I love . . . .