…More ancient-modern goodness.  My mixer and friend Josh Davis sent me this link, and I had to share it. If you’re interested in buying it, here you go.  Seeing this makes me chuckle, but on the more serious side, perhaps it is at once lamentable and redemptive. 

Lamentable: Labeling one’s iPod as one’s “hymnal” demands some cultural exegesis.  The church has lost something significant when it moved from hymn books to screens…from its congregational music being experienced in the context of corporate worship to being experienced in isolation in one’s car or with some earbuds.  With these shifts, the church lost a little piece of being a shaper of art in culture, because music-reading no longer is part of church worship culture at large.  The church took one step back from being a place where one was able to more deeply engage in the art of music-making by reading music.  This iPod cover is, in a sense, an ironic herald of that reality.

Redemptive: Labeling one’s iPod as one’s “hymnal” helps bridge congregational worship into all of life, at least symbolically.  As Calvin said, “the world is the theater of God’s glory.”  All of life is worship, and one way of summarizing the process of sanctification is that, over time, God is turning our hearts, part by part, away from worshiping other things to worshiping Him.  Growing in Christ is growing in increasingly “whole-hearted” worship of God.  Because of that, I want my whole life to be one “hymn of praise” to God.  Therefore, I want my iPod to be filled with songs that lead me into worship of God, in one way or another (and, to be clear, I don’t think that means that all my music be “worship” music or even “Christian” music).  I want every aspect of my life to be a hymn-book, leading me in praise of God, from the mundane to the overtly “sacred.”

Anyway, I’ll definitely be curious as to how well this thing sells.  I don’t anticipate much!