Month: October 2021

God beyond earth’s finest treasures

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘God beyond earth’s finest treasures’ by Martin Leckebusch. It’s a paraphrase of Psalm 16, and a good one at that. 

The words are addressed in the first person (I/me) to God, so this is a devotional hymn – in verse 1, ‘you alone shall have my praise’, and in verse 2 ‘countless gifts your love has planned’, ‘safe within your care I stand’.  But it’s also a declaration of commitment: ‘I will love your cherished people, I will serve you all my days’.  The final verse looks forward to the promise of eternal life: ‘When my earthly days are over, fresh delights remain in store’.

The words fit the suggested tune ‘St Helen’ well, but it was a bit of a surprise, as this tune is usually associated with the Catholic eucharistic hymn ‘Lord enthroned in heavenly splendour’. The present words are very different in tone, but it works.

Christ be Lord of all our days

6th Century icon of Christ Pantocrator
Unknown author / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Christ be the Lord of all our days” by Timothy Dudley-Smith.  John indicated that it was originally written with the tune ‘Repton’ (‘Dear Lord an Father’) and used that instead of tune ‘Cloth Fair’ in the book.

As the first word hints, this is all about Christ.  Each verse focuses on one aspect of his relationship with us. The first, ‘Lord of all our days … of our unremembered birth … of our griefs and fears’, reminds us that he is with us throughout our lives whether known and remembered or not.

In the second verse, Christ is ‘Source of all our deeds ..the fount [of] springs of love … the ground of all our prayers’. Source, fount, ground all suggest a priority: it is the existence and love of Christ that should motivate our actions, rather than us turning to him once we’ve decided what to do. But it’s not easy to make a habit of that.

In the third verse, which logically perhaps should be the last but isn’t, Christ is ‘the goal of all our hopes, the end to whom we come … our many-mansioned home’. If he initiates our actions, from our ‘unremembered birth’  then he is also the one to whom we come at the hour of our death.

Finally, he is ‘the vision of our lives … light of everlasting light, the bright and morning star’.  In between birth and death, it is Christ who should illuminate those actions that he has already prompted and that will lead us home to him.

Let us rejoice

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Let us rejoice’ by Martin Leckebusch.  John said that it was set in the book to the tune of ‘For all the saints’ but in my copy of the book sets it to a tune by Stanford – I wonder if we have different editions?

The overall theme of the hymn seems to be patience and endurance in the strength of God.  The first verse speaks of peace and calm found in God’s acceptance, the second of strength to face trials found in his ‘fatherly embrace’, the third of trust in his glory and splendour, the fourth of the faith that ‘God is at work through all the griefs we share’, and finally of the love of God found deep in our hearts that prompts our praise.  It would be a good one to sing on a (non-silent!) retreat.

Lift up his name

This weekend’s song is “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty” by Nathan Fellingham.  It’s a setting of a standard liturgical text, with some extra lines. The hymnwriter is young (born 1977 and the song was copyrighted in 1995 when he was 18) and it’s refreshing to see young people’s compositions being published alongside those of established writers.  I was glad that John was playing it on the piano as I couldn’t have sung this one by sight, which probably just reflects that contemporary worship songs are informed more by the popular music of our time than by classical forms.

The additional lines in this song are “Lift up his name with the sound of singing, lift up his name in all the earth, lift up your voice and give him glory, for he is worthy to be praised”. I have used the first line of this part as a title for the blog post, rather than the more generic “Holy, holy”. This is indeed a song to lift the heart.

Glory to you, O God

Today’s hymn is ‘Glory to you, O God’ by Howard Gaunt. It’s another of the hymns from the ‘saints’ section of the book. The suggested tune is that of the hymn ‘My song is love unknown’.  John made some changes to the words and used a different tune.  But these comments are based on the words in Sing Praise.

The first verse gives glory to God for the saints, using the traditional language of the early Church of winning victory in the fight against the evils of fire and sword. The second gives thanks for those saints who walked in humble paths, speaking God’s word and act as shining lights to inform our own lives.  The third verse is about ourselves, asking to know God’s truth and walk his way as ‘saints on earth’.

These are three very different concepts of sainthood.  The language of the first verse is not commonly used in most Western churches today. Even British saints such as Alban and Thomas (Becket) who were martyred are not usually spoken of as winning victory so much as showing courage in the face of evil, and other martyrs such as Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and (on the Catholic side) Margaret Clitherow are not usually called ‘saints’ even though they showed equal courage and loyalty to their beliefs. The language of war and victory does however still resonate with those in countries where persecution is still a reality.  The imagery of the second verse is more commonly found in our British churches, where we remember ‘home grown’ saints such as Cuthbert, Wilfrid and David whose ascetic lives are held up as a model of discipleship.  And the concept of all God’s people, living as well as dead, as being saints, is a popular one in our time.