One more excerpt from my retreat talk.
 

A couple years ago I heard the Thomanerchor, the St. Thomas Boys Choir from Leipzig. This 800 year-old-choir is the same one that Johann Sebastian Bach himself directed and wrote music for. It is no longer a church choir. It is run by the City of Leipzig. It had to be so. Seventy years under first the Nazis and then the Communists nearly destroyed the church in Saxony. Less than 20% of the people there are church members. Less than 30% of youth in Germany believe there is a God.

I saw an interview with one of the boys, Maximilian, 18, who came from a family of atheists. This is what he said: “Through my contact with the spiritual music in the St. Thomas Choir it became clear to me that I would get baptized, get confirmed. And it has given a lot of inner strength. You don’t have to be faithful to be part of the St. Thomas Choir, but it can happen that you become so.”

That’s right, this atheist became a Christian by singing the music of Bach. A little later he said:

“Many of the faithful find themselves in the cleft not knowing how to feel connected to God, not really able to see prayer as an exchange with God. So they pray, but don’t feel right away that something is flowing back to them. And that’s different when it comes to music and singing together. You sing, in honor of the Lord, as was Bach’s intent for all his spiritual compositions, and at the very same moment you have the effect. It’s an overwhelming result. And yet in this tiny moment, a connection to God is created.”

It’s amazing what God can do with the gift of music.

Read Psalm 57:7-11,  and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.
 Wayne
Today’s Reading: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2057:7-11