“A great movie demands great music, and the same is true of life. Worship is our soundtrack, and we need to look no further than the Psalms. The Jewish people took three pilgrimages every year. What did they do while walking? . . . They sang Psalms of Ascent. That soundtrack helped them make the journey to Jerusalem.”- Mark Batterson
“[Music] is the profoundest nonchemical medication.”- Oliver Sacks (1933-2015), neurologist and naturalist
Mark Batterson continues Chapter 5 of A Million Little Miracles as he notes a discovery made by horticulturalists in Denver. They found that playing Bach to plants causes what they call a sonic bloom. Also, at a monastery in France, musical monks serenaded their cows with Mozart. As a result, the cows produced more milk.
Most significantly, in Reflections on the Psalms, C. S. Lewis observed that the happiest and healthiest people praised the most. Conversely, ‘cranks, misfits, and malcontents’ praised the least. Hence, Lewis concluded: ” Praise almost seems to be inner health made audible.”
In addition, Pastor Batterson reminds us of this past thought:
“Remember the super superlative — ‘Holy, holy, holy?’ That song is our A440 — the reference frequency used to calibrate instruments before a concert. It’s the perfect pitch that tunes our body, mind, and spirit with God, ourselves, and others. And the benefits are not just theological, they are physiological. Nothing tunes vagal tone like worship.”
In conclusion, Mark notes, the vagus nerve serves as the largest cranial nerve in the human body. The nerve starts in the medulla oblongata and wanders through the body. Furthermore, the vagus nerve functions as an information superhighway that synchronizes our internal organs.
Above all, on Easter Ever 1920 a German doctor named Otto Loewi woke up from a dream. He quickly jotted a note in doctor chicken-scratch, then fell back asleep. Later, when Loewi figured out what he wrote, he conducted an experiment on a frog’s heart.
The frog’s heart beat slower when Loewi stimulated the vagus nerve. Because the nerve released a substance known today as acetylcholine. This revealed that the primary language of nerve cells is chemical, not electrical.
Today’s question: How does worship serve as our soundtrack? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “Worship God with a capital G”