Daily Devotional For August 30, 2025
And they were singing, as it were, a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders, and no one was able to learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. Rev 14:3.
The pastor of a church near Alexandria, Virginia went to a music store to buy a digital piano for the youth chapel at his home church. The pianist of the youth chapel was planning to meet him at the store to make sure he got the right piano. The pastor arrived at the store before the pianist did and noticed the piano he had seen in the magazine the pianist had given him. He decided to go over and test it out on his own, to see how it would sound.
His hands moved over the keys for a bit, but he didn’t hear anything special. The pianist had spoken highly of this instrument and it was highly regarded by reviewers in the magazine. But the pastor’s ear suggested the piano might be over-rated. As he stood there hitting some of the notes, the pianist walked in. He came over and began to play. Instantly the sound changed! The pastor blurted out, “Man! That’s a good product! That’s a good piano!” What made the difference was the masterful hands of the musician.1
The difference between the two men that day was a difference in experience. The pastor had little experience with pianos. He was just making random sounds. The pianist, on the other hand, was not sitting down in front of a piano for the first time. He had been playing for years. He had taken the lessons. He had spent countless hours practicing without an audience so that when the pews were filled, God would be praised in the music.
Our text says that the 144,000 had to learn the new song. What qualifies them to sing in heaven is what they went through while on the earth. While the song is new, it wasn’t thrown together on the spur of the moment, they had been practicing for years already while on earth.
Life today is a rehearsal. We are rehearsing for this song. If the boss is getting on your nerves, remember that it’s a rehearsal. You don’t have to respond in kind. When you find out that people are talking about you behind your back, you can hold your peace, it’s a rehearsal for that new song. When your feelings have been hurt you don’t need to strike back, make a rehearsal out of it instead!
When you sing this song in heaven, you will be harmonizing with people who hurt you, people who lashed out at you in their own pain, people who were difficult for you to get along with. If you can’t “bury the hatchet” today, how will you sing then? The new song will be then, rehearsal starts now!
Lord, help me to start rehearsing today. As I keep my eyes on You, I can let go of the hurts that bind me to this earth and begin learning that new song!
1 Damien Johnson, “A New Song,”Adventist Review, December 18, 2003, 14-15.