Your statutes have been my songs
    in the house of my sojourning.   (Psalm 119:54)

Believers have always sung. We sing because we must somehow find expression for the deep wells of feeling aroused in our hearts by the word of God.

Sometimes those songs will be laments, it is true. But often they will be songs of joy in the midst of suffering. The context of these verses reminds us that we do not sing our hymns and songs because the present is easy or prosperous; we sing because the future is glorious, because the word of God assures us of this.

(Christopher Ash, Bible delight, p. 82, emphasis added)