I just listened to an interesting CD set called ‘The Profound Effects of Music on Life’ by Andrew Pudewa. I bought it from Sarah Cooper at SingNLearn.

Andrew quotes a number of scientific studies involving young children, college students, mice and plants.

One of the studies was by David Merrell, he won the Virginia State Science Fair in the late 1990’s. He used 72 mice split into 3 groups. He used a standard maze and tested each group before introducing them to music. They all took around 10 minutes to get through the maze.

One group heard Mozart for 12 hours a day, another silence and the third heard a Heavy Metal group for 12 hours a day. After a few weeks the Classical group got through the maze in 1 1/2 minutes, the no music group took around 5 minutes and the Heavy Metal group took half an hour. They, the heavy metal group, also became very aggressive and started killing each other.

Other studies show how music actually effects the way brain cells grow. Conclusion…. good music is good for you!

After listening to these CD’s it makes me wonder if Christian Heavy Metal music is such a good idea. Plants and mice cannot understand words, but the ‘sound’ of this type of music is detrimental to their health. What does it do to us?

In college, I remember learning in a music history classes that even in the time of the Greeks, philosophers said that a whole group of people can be dramatically influenced by the type of music they listened to. Apparently one of the music modes in that time made people ‘lazy.’

Sarah Cooper send an interesting article to me today about how music is healing. You can read it here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5194884.stm

It does make a difference what we listen to, and yes it makes a huge difference in our lives when we actively produce music, like using our guitars to play worship songs!

Several things struck me this year in reading 2 Chronicles 20 and how Jehoshaphat responded to the news that a ‘vast army’ was coming to attack them. Scripture says that he was ‘alarmed,’ How would you feel if you knew a massive army was coming to destroy your city?

My first response would definitely be like Jehoshaphat’s! But look what he did. He not only sought God’s help, but proclaimed a fast for the whole city. They didn’t have radios or TV’s then. News spread fast, probably through the synagogues and word of mouth. It says that people came to seek help from the Lord from ‘every town’ in Judah. Whole families came.

They knew they were powerless with such a massive attack coming. They humbled their hearts and God ended up fighting the battle for them. (The armies destroyed each other and the Israelites never even fought. The singers went out at the head of the army, singing praises.)

I was in a women’s Bible Study called Community Bible Study (CBS) when the first Gulf War broke out. It was a group of around 80 woman from 30 churches. It was not a ‘quiet’ group. Even in the parking lot the ladies, myself included, loved to talk to each other.

It was usually hard for our teacher to get us quiet to even start the class. When the war broke out, our Bible Teacher told us we were going to start with 20 minutes of quiet prayer to seek God’s help for our soldiers.

I honestly thought the idea was great, but no way could these women be quiet for 20 minutes. How could they ever make that work? Well, the next week I was amazed that no one spoke and 100% of the ladies humbled their hearts.

We don’t usually respond with sackcloth and ashes like they did in the Old Testament. But God is looking inside our hearts. He still responds to a broken and contrite spirit. Those are the people he lifts up!