I’d like to come up with some musician’s prayers to be prayed before accompanying service. Care to share your own with me? 🙂
From the Internet:
Six Uplifting Prayers for Musicians and Singers
From Suggestions:
“God, please help me to do my best to glorify You and praise Your name. Work through me to lead Your people in singing your praise loudly and fully, and may my focus be not only myself, but on You and allow me to be the conduit to connect You to Your people and them to you.”
“Dear Lord, please bless my music that it might glorify your name. May using it to serve you always be my aim. Let it be a witness to your majesty and love and that you are watching from your throne above. Oh Lord I ask for guidance in everything I do and pray you’ll make my music an instrument for you.”
Stanza 2 of the hymn “Take My Life and Let it Be” (LSB 783):
Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love;
Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
“Lord, may what we sing with our lips (play with our hands & feet), we believe in our hearts, that we may show your love in our lives. (A variation on the traditional Chorister’s Prayer.)
The Chorister’s Prayer:
Bless, O Lord, us thy servants who minister in thy temple.Grant that what we sing with our lips, we may believe in our hearts,And what we believe in our hearts, we may show forth in our lives,Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Some Attempts of My Own toward a Musician’s Prayer
“O Lord, open my lips, and mouth will declare your praise. Grant my fingers grace to accompany what could only come from You.”
“I am humbled, O Lord, but sustain me. Make me fit by Your Son. Grant me ears to focus upon your Word, and help me to serve Your people with the gifts and opportunities You have given me.”
“My mites for Your song. Look upon me in favor and grant me Your peace.”
I’ll keep thinking about this, and I’m very open to more suggestions.
I’m surprised there isn’t a Bach prayer or something. Looking into the Chorister’s Prayer, it seems to have first appeared in 1934, though it may have ties to the Latin text used for admitting a “Psalmista” or Cantor in the late 1500s: Vide, ut, quod ore cantas, corde credas, et quod core credis, operibus comprobes.
According to one article, that Latin may be even older, such as the 13th or 14 century. According to another, that saying comes from the blessing given to cantors by the decree of the Council of Carthage c. 398 AD (!). It translates as “See that what you sing with your lips you believe in your heart, and that what you believe in your heart shows forth in your works.”
Another awesome Latin expression from that latter article is this: Qui bene cantat bis orat: He who sings well prays (or praises) twice. Beautiful!
