I am still looking forward to a time when we can gather in church, without worrying about Covid, and sing our hearts out. Christians have been singing the Faith since the earliest communities began to form after the Resurrection and Pentecost. Music is one of God’s gifts that helps us express our deepest human emotions – praise and joy, longing and hope, devotion and love, sorrow and grief, repentance and forgiveness.
When it comes to our worship together, shared music-making is one of the ways we join our hearts and voices in ‘a sacrifice of praise.’ If you want to start a lively discussion ask someone what their favourite hymn is. If you want to start an argument, rubbish someone else’s choice. I still remember a new minister (no, it wasn’t me) holding up the church hymn book and telling the congregation “this needs to go!” It wasn’t a good start.
There are lines and verses from hymns that lodge in our minds and become part of our prayers, they stay inside as resources for those moments when we need God’s help, guidance and grace. Here are several that do it for me:
“Take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess, the beauty of Thy peace…”
“My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.”
“Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”
“Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see…”
You will have your own personal hymn-prayers; those lines that you know by heart, and which nourish, strengthen or energise you at those times when, for no obvious reason they pop into your mind. Clue – the Holy Spirit knows the hymns you know!
At the start of another year, I think we are still suffering from what could be called subdued hope, and long haul weariness. A low-grade anxiety affects how we see the world. We look at how life is through Covid tinted glasses.
Habits of the mind can quickly become the habits of the heart. Which is why it’s important for Christians to take off the negative tinted glasses and look at the world as people who actually believe that there is no shadow of turning with our faithful God. Instead of morning by morning having our mood, our minds and our view of the world shaped and coloured in the grey emulsion of media news, hum in your head “morning by morning new mercies I see,” or pray for “the beauty of thy peace.”
In other words look at the world through the lenses of “Amazing Grace”, or “the Lord’s my Shepherd”, or “Lord the light of your Love is shining”, or “Before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea” Get the idea? Remember what Paul urged the Roman Christians in chapter 12? Here are his words in J B Philips translation:
“Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.” (Romans 12.2)
Singing hymns is a process of re-setting our bearings, and changing the lenses through which we look at the world. Hymns are one way God “reclothes us in our rightful minds”, and “re-moulds our mind from within.”
Here’s a hymn often sung at the start of New Year. The first and last verse can become our prayer for 2022. It describes the mind-set that looks look at the world through the clear lens of faith in God’s faithfulness:
Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided,
urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way,
sought us and saved us, pardoned and provided:
Lord of the years, we bring our thanks today.
Lord for ourselves; in living power remake us –
self on the cross and Christ upon the throne,
past put behind us, for the future take us:
Lord of our lives, to live for Christ alone.
Singing our praise and prayers, alone, or when we are together, is a health giving spiritual exercise in Christian realism. We sing together to express our hopes and fears, to tell our love and devotion to the Triune God of love, to seek forgiveness for ourselves and others, to celebrate the faithfulness, goodness and mercy of God, and to give ourselves in love and service to God and others – all of these things. And every time we do we are refusing to let the world squeeze us into its mould. Instead we are allowing God to re-mould us from within to do God’s good, perfect and loving purpose for our lives.
I remember us using "Hymns for Today's Church" in Crown Terrace - an excellent collection which I miss as I've never come across it being used anywhere else. "Lord, for the years" was one of them if I remember correctly.
Good to see a mention of one of Graham Kendrick's hymns too - someone I am coming to appreciate more and more. Am I just showing my age when I say he is the last good hymnwriter we've had?
Posted by: Dave Summers | January 20, 2022 at 04:41 PM