It is difficult to find settings where large groups of people (not just kids but even adults) gather together and sing. People sing at concerts - but even most concerts are still primarily about listening to the performance of the artist and hearing them sing. The audience is probably doing more shouting and cheering than they are actually singing. Even traditions like going door to door Christmas caroling together seems to be mostly a practice of the past. Perhaps if you attend an English football match, you will get to experience swaths of men and women standing arm in arm and singing the chants and songs that are common to their community. (But even this usually entails a few pints to loosen up the singing voices.) And yet, every Sunday, in churches all over the world, people get together and sing. Out loud. To God and each other. For everyone to hear. Even if they aren't good at it. To an uninitiated bystander they might even appear foolish. (Or maybe...there is actually something really simple and beautiful and compelling about it...)
So why do Christians sing? Paul tells the Ephesians that it's actually a very important part of how we walk. He tells them to walk not as unwise people but as wise. He says they need to make the most of their time! "The days are evil," he tells them. So they need to maximize - make the best use out of - the time they have been given! And where you would think he would say, "Get to work! Go evangelize! Go preach! Go fight; go build; go do." - instead, he contrasts two things. Don't get drunk. That makes sense. It leads to recklessness and foolishness. Not a good way to make best use of the time. But what he tells them they ARE to do is this: speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. When we think of maximizing the time, I don't think we would immediately think to sing together. But Paul obviously does! He tells them that this is the outworking of being filled with the Spirit. It means making music with our heart to the Lord, giving thanks to him always and for eerything, AND submitting to one another out of love for Christ.
Aren't all of these things major emphases of the Christian life? Glorify God? Give him thanks? Love one another? Be filled with the Spirit? Paul says that each of these are done when we speak to and encourage one another in our singing. Let us thank God for the hymns he has given us to sing! Let us be grateful for the brothers and sisters who submitted to their brothers and sisters, made music with their heart to the Lord, and left us rich songs to sing about his grace! The Lord has used them to be a blessing. And let's not just sing along rotely. Let's not be those who are chronically dissatisfied with music in the church because we're just always chasing some elusive sound or trying to recapture some mountaintop feeling or experience. Let us, instead, be those who regard our singing together as a vital part of walking wisely - and sing heartily to enocurage one another and give thanks to the Lord. Always and in everything, we sing.
