Sing for Joy

"Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord...let us bow down in worship."—Psalm 95:1

In July of 1983, I went with my wife Catherine (Rozendal) Wolters and our children to Sioux Center, Iowa for a "Conference on Liturgy and Music in Reformed Worship." The conference began with a festival of psalms and hymns in the beautiful new college chapel. It featured Dale Grotenhuis leading the Dordt College Alumni Choir, Joan Ringerwole playing the large Cassavant organ, and Gerald Bouma directing the conference brass ensemble in which I played my trombone. 

The conference was a response to the call of God in Psalm 95, "O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. . . and extol him with music and song." About 300 people attended. At one time, King David had an orchestra of 4,000 instrumentalists praising the Lord (I Chronicles 23:5)—what glorious praise that must have been! All through the centuries the psalms have been sung with the whole congregation being the basic choir! 

When I selected songs for the congregation to sing in the churches I served, it was always a joy to follow the church order which said, "The Psalms MUST be sung and hymns MAY be sung." O, for a revival of Psalm singing in our churches! May our lives always be filled with psalms, hymns, ans spiritual songs.

It was on this trip that we went to the town of Hawarden, Iowa where my wife Cathy ("Cass") was born in 1930. Hawarden is not far from Sioux Center. Her father was Rev. John Rozendal who served the Hawarden CRC when Cass was born. He told me that while he served that church, he received a letter of call to a church in the Dakotas. Part of the salary would be the use of a cow!