I wanted to send this devotion out yesterday as a video but I couldn’t as the file was too large. I just figured out a way to kinda get it done! Sorry my brain cells don’t work fast.

I was talking about my mother’s Bible that I use often. Her Good News Bible shows years of faithful wear on it. I don’t think I dare call it a patina. But it is comfortingly worn. 

I also said that I had a text conversation with a friend that included sharing comfort, love and compassion. At the end, I think we both wished we could see each other. I began to ponder about how to do better being God’s presence in situations such as this one – because I believe we are often called to be just that for those around us. 

I began to think of ways my mom shared those things with me and perhaps my siblings. But first let me share a few scripture passages about comfort, singing and compassion. 

Colossians 3:16: Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. 

Isaiah 40:1: Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 

Isaiah 49:13: Shout for joy, you heavens, rejoice you earth, burst into song, you mountains! For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion. 

One of the ways I remembered my mom comforting us was to sing a snippet of a song to us. My mom had lots of ditties she sang to us. I don’t know where they came from but she sang them to us. This one was, I discovered for this devotion, a snippet of two lines from a song sung by Paul Robeson called Mah Lindy Lou. The earliest recording I found was 1932 and my mom would have been 7 at the time. I don’t know if mom created this or someone in her family – her mother or father or a sibling – the Yunkers were a musical bunch! 

See, just a short sweet piece that did the trick every time she crooned that to me. I loved to hear her alto voice layer me in reverberations of sound. Now, I think of the construction of those sentences and I think – who was really telling me they loved me? I always thought it was my mom, but maybe it was the mockingbird through his song, maybe it was God or maybe it was God using my mom to show me love by singing praises and thereby comforting me. 

I like to think of my mom singing that song to my friend. It would have comforted her, I’m sure. I look at mom’s Good News Bible and if I put a finger over one O in Good it becomes God News Bible – the Bible is God’s news and it is indeed good news! 

It is full of compassion and comfort and love and calls us to sing to God and on his behalf. Music comes from God and I have no doubt that he would croon for us as His young. Think about that…..we are God’s young. He is so much older that any of us that we all fit into this one sweet category, no barriers of any sort can be drawn or made. God would croon to us, his young. 

My mother mimicked that for me to comfort me. To teach me His ways. Why not? Why couldn’t that be, even if she wasn’t quite conscious of what she was doing. So, this is for my friend and all of you out there who need comfort and compassion shown to you or you need to be the giver. Whether you choose to sing or not, let’s be aware and ready as God calls us to minister to each other and let’s be present for whose sake? For God’s sake and the sake of His people, each and every one. 

And all God’s people crooned, Amen. 

~Shauna Weil

A devotion on behalf of the Goodrich UMC Devotion Ministry