Spiritual Scunneration and a Good Devotional Hymn

What is it that leads us to describe an experience, a poem, a hymn, a talk, a book as 'devotional'? Devotional can mean it makes me feel better, or its purpose is to awaken emotions of love to God, or it creates in us a desire to serve  God better, or repent and turn away from our sins. But an equally important question for me is what makes a hymn, picture, book or whatever else 'devotional'? I started thinking about this when I came across a hymn I haven't sung for years, but even reading it I felt something deeply stirring, a mixture of memory and resonance, faith and familiarity, love and longing, desire and determination, regret and renewal. 

The word devotional is an essential word in Christian theology and spirituality. It refers to those experiences and encounters, those moments of intimate significance in our journey with God, when our deepest hopes encounter love inexhaustible, and when therefore our greatest failings are gathered up into grace sufficient.

Sometimes I don't know what to pray when most fully aware of my humanity, and the apparent impossibility of being other than a recurring disappointment to God. (The apostle above portrays this kind of spiritual being scunnered!) That of course is itself a lack of trust in the power of God's love and grace to renew and transform and make possible a new creation. So a hymn like the one below, more or less consigned to memory like an artefact from a previous age covered over with all that has come after, retains a mysterious hold on my religious affections. It more fully expresses my faith than most ad hoc words of stammering yearning I can write in a journal, or say in a prayer. This is a hymn which isn't about how I feel, as if God didn't already know all that anyway. This is a hymn of spiritual aspiration, of ethical re-affrimation and of discipleship which takes seriously inner disposition as well as outer behaviour.  It will find its way into an order of service soon, as I am privileged to preach around and choose some of the hymns - to choose this one would be to choose a hymn undeservedly neglected, but which is, in the richest senses, devotional. 

 

1. May the mind of Christ, my Savior,
   Live in me from day to day,
   By His love and pow’r controlling
   All I do and say.
2. May the Word of God dwell richly
   In my heart from hour to hour,
   So that all may see I triumph
   Only through His pow’r.
3. May the peace of God my Father
   Rule my life in everything,
   That I may be calm to comfort
   Sick and sorrowing.
4. May the love of Jesus fill me
   As the waters fill the sea;
   Him exalting, self abasing,
   This is victory.
5. May I run the race before me,
   Strong and brave to face the foe,
   Looking only unto Jesus
   As I onward go.

Comments

[RuthG]

Thank you for this; it is a hymn I choose regularly, partly because it says what I am trying to say in a service - but, self-indulgently, because it was the hymn we chose for our wedding, and remains part of our lives in that way. It is lovely to come across it honoured by somebody else who can put into words why it matters to some of us so much.

[Catriona]

Like Ruth, this hymn is quite firmly in my repetoire, if not all that frequently used in public worship. It's a hymn that says things I want to say better than I can say them, and that, for me, is part of what makes it authentically devotional. Thank you.