The Wonder of Sound – Tim Alicino
From stars to dusts everything has a common denominator: sound. Sound is a universal language. Sound is produced by a vibration, a pulse. Every single substance has a pulse. Vibrations are categorized by their frequencies. Some vibrations or frequencies are audible or visible and many more are not. Stars vibrate and so do atoms. All creation has this in common.
In 1995 while in Wales, I was seeking the origin of sound in the scriptures. To my amazement God never created sound, He created light but not sound. (It could be argued that when God created light he also created sound – for sound can fall under a “type” of light). As I went over and over the first few chapters of the bible, I could not find an answer, until finally read Genesis 1:3 with new insight: “then God said: “Let there be light”, and there was light”.
God has a voice, Psalm 29 describes it really beautifully, and therefore if He spoke, a sound is implied, for no voice can be uttered without sound. God used His voice to create. He used His life resonating sound to create. In my view, sound is the seed of light.
In chapter 1 of Genesis the bible records “God said” 8 times. Each time whatever God said came to past. God used sound, the sound of His voice, to create.
CS Lewis, in the Chronicles of Narnia, depicts the scene of creation with “Aslan” singing the universe into existence!
Sound is at the base of language. If words were not uttered there would be no need to record them in a written form. Children that cannot hear, never learn to speak or write. We should think of word/s, primarily as sound.
John 1:1 says: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God.” Here John refers to Jesus. If we think of the “word” as spoken, what we conclude is that, Jesus, the Word, the “sound” or “expression” of God was there at creation and the means to creation. In fact the bible confirms that by saying that “in” and “by” Jesus all things were created. An added poetic bonus is that the same John in Revelation refers to the sound of Jesus’ voice as “the sound of many waters” (like a water fall). Scientifically there is in nature only 1 sound that contains all others (all frequencies), the sound of “many waters”, the sound of a waterfall.
Ironically, something so great and obvious, actually only really exists in our minds. For sound is not only the movement of molecules in a medium (air, water or concrete), sound is rather the sense, feeling and information that our brain deciphers.
Therefore sound is spiritual in essence. It is invisible. It only really exists in our minds and hearts (sing to yourself your favourite song, there is no physical sound involved yet you are hearing it!). That is why sound conveys emotions so strongly. Imagine a movie scene with a child running in the street. Without sound such a seen could be interpreted in many different ways. If the music were joyful and happy we would conclude that the child is playing, if the music were tense and dark we would think that the child is running away from danger.
Sound is the bridge to another realm. It is a door to the spiritual world. It is a disguised access to the invisible. That is why music is so powerful. The matter that constitutes music is sound; there would be no music without it.
Because sound has such spiritual implications, it is also the medium by which powerful messages are delivered. Words have an inherent power, “the power of life and death”.