SAUCIER — Break into song

Yesterday, my 5-year-old granddaughter, as she is wont to do, started singing in the back seat of the car.

She made me think of Jubal.

Genesis 4 tells us that Lamech had three sons. The first was Jabal, “the ancestor of tent-dwelling herdsmen.”

Another, Tubal-cain, is credited as “the ancestor of all who work copper and iron.”

Jubal, the third son, is noted as the patron of “all who play the harp and the pipe.”

It is curious that, in identifying the important cultural elements of the Israelites, music has equal standing with agriculture and technology.

There were the Psalms of course, songs of raw emotion and divine communication attributed to David, but there was so much more.

Moses and Miriam led the people in a spontaneous hymn after safely crossing the Red Sea.

Overwhelmed by joy, Hannah sang when God gave her a son in the Book of Samuel.

The prophet Habakkuk ended his book with a song that, despite the injustice around him, pledges his faith in the mercy of God.

In the New Testament, choirs of angels announce the Child’s birth. A lifetime later, his last meal ends with singing of the Passover Hallel.

There is Mary’s “Magnificat,” Zechariah’s “Benedictus,” and Simeon’s “Nunc Dimittus” when the child Jesus is presented in the Temple.

We are told that, imprisoned and locked in stocks, Paul and Silas sang words filled with both pleading and trust.

We are no different today. We have beautiful liturgical music, but sometimes we find our needs given voice best in music we hear outside of church.

The genre doesn’t matter. In rock, you have Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” Cohen’s “If It Be Your Will,” and just about anything from U2.

Country’s Cody Johnson offers “By Your Grace” for those who “live with a past I can’t get past,” while Keith Urban sums it up with “God’s Been Good to Me.”

If you lean toward the classics, Tosca’s prayer in Puccini’s opera could be mistaken for the anguish of Job, if Job were an Italian soprano.

In the jazz album A Love Supreme, John Coltrane’s saxophone transports the listener to an encounter with the Infinite.

Sometimes, when the pain of grief or despair has silenced us, or even when beauty and blessing have rendered a speechless awe, a song can be our voice and our prayer.

Find a song that fills your heart, and let it speak your truth.

Maybe even sing along. As Augustine said, “... who sings, prays twice.”