Behold, I make all things new / Take me as I am

I’m writing a single blog post today (28 January, though you probably won’t see it until the 29th) covering two adjacent songs in the Sing Praise book: numbers 129 and 130, “Behold, behold, I make all things new” and “Take, O take me as I am”.  This is because there are several similarities between them: both are short meditative choruses intended to be sung repeatedly, both are set in three or four parts for different voices, both take the theme of making a new start, and perhaps not surprisingly therefore, they are by the same composer (John Bell).   I’m also familiar with both of them: the second is a favourite with our church music group, and I think I came across “Behold, behold” when I attended a singing workshop led by John Bell himself a few years ago. They are short enough to reproduce the text in full here.

Take, O take me as I am, summon out what I shall be;
Set your seal upon my heart and live in me.

With these songs we come to the end of the theme of ‘Christian initiation’.  The second song develops this theme as we ask Jesus to take us as we are, but to move us on, by ‘summoning out’ what he wanted us to be all along.  “Set your seal upon my heart” is a reference to the Song of Songs, that great romantic poem attributed to Solomon, but often seen by Christians as an allegory of Christ’s love for his disciples and ours for him.  To turn to Christ is not simply assenting to a set of beliefs or a commitment to try and keep certain rules, but to make a commitment based on love just as strong as that which leads to marriage.

Behold, behold, I make all things new,
Beginning with you, and starting from today.
Behold, behold, I make all things new,
My promise is true, for I am Christ the Way.

The “starting from today” is the same sort of idea as “take me as I am”. Christians talk of conversion as a “kairos moment” from a Greek word meaning the time when opportunities arise, the “right time” to make a change or start something new.  It doesn’t matter what state your life is in right now, if the time feels right then start from where you are, here, now, today, and let Christ make you new. As John points out in the service where he uses this song, the text is based on 2 Corinthians 5:17 – “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation”, the implication being that the old creation, the old self, the old life no longer matters.

These two songs then, taken together, help us to make that commitment of letting Jesus take us as we are and make something new of us.

One thought on “Behold, I make all things new / Take me as I am”

  1. I enjoyed both these songs, and I endorse Stephen’s idea of commenting on both in one post. They are both new to me. I think John Bell has a great gift with both words and music, and he is the most-used author in this hymn book (32 of his items are included, beating Timothy Dudley-Smith by 4). Both these items are one-stanza compositions, and are presumably intended to be short items. They don’t particularly strike me as intended to be repeated endlessly, and in fact when I tried repeating “Take O take” twice, it seemed overdone by the time I had finished. However in their musical mood they fall more into the category of “hymn” rather than “song”, and for both of them I wished there were more verses.

    The book itself says BEHOLD, BEHOLD I MAKE ALL THINGS NEW is based on 2 Corinthians 5:17 “If anyone is in Christ – new creation!” (Paul’s sentence has no main verb in it). The ending “Christ the way” seems to have been chosen to make the rhyme with the third line’s “… from today”, as the expression “Christ the way” doesn’t appear in that part of 2 Corinthians. The verses surrounding 5:17 itch to be set to music as well, and I wondered about extending the hymn along the lines of:

    Behold, behold I draw you to me
    to come and be free
    and reconciled through Christ.
    Behold, behold, the sins of your kind
    are put out of mind,
    for he has paid the price.

    Behold, behold: the old life is gone,
    the new life has come,
    the past is wiped away.
    Behold, behold: ambassadors we
    to tell you: “Be free,
    be reconciled today!”

    … or something (I hasten to point out this is NOT a well-worked-out suggestion … for instance, I’ve switched from talking TO Jesus in John’s verse to talking ABOUT him in mine). One of the great things about this tiny section of Paul’s letter is that it still has great thematic development – we are new creations, and being new we are not just left on display on the mantelpiece but we join the ambassadorial team and gain new direction for our lives. New vocation as well as new creation.

    The other things that struck me and puzzled me about this song/hymn is the 3-part harmonization of the music. The melody and bass are clear enough, but the middle part is strangely static. In Bach the middle part would descend to middle C at the end of bars 3 & 9 and would move in descending scales in bar 5 & 11. I wondered what were the local factors that made John write it the way he did? (Was the middle part to be played on a two-note set of pan pipes?)

    TAKE O TAKE ME AS I AM is not given a bible verse in the book. Again it is a charming little hymn/song. I was reminded of two others:

    * one is Dave Bryant’s “Jesus take me as I am / I can come no other way” – in which I’ve never been able to work out whether I like the second line: of course it is true that I can come no other way than the way I am, but should I be satisfied with this, and shouldn’t there be an element of my effort as well as God’s sovereign power in order that I be made “like a precious stone”? I vastly prefer John’s “summon out what I shall be” which encompasses both God’s call and my response.

    * the other is Frances Havergal’s “Take my life and let it be / consecrated Lord to thee”, which goes through different aspects of my life, and allows me as I sing to question myself about different ways in which my dedication might be expressed in practical application. Somehow I wished that John had provided some further verses so that the hymn could be used in a longer context.

    The music for the stanza finishes in the dominant. It did occur to me to wonder if John intended there to be a distinct “unfinished” end to the music, in order to heighten the fact that when we become new creations Jesus doesn’t expect us to stand still but move forward? (Much has been written about whether Mark 16:8 is intended the same way!) But in singing it, I felt obliged to add a resolving coda to finish in the tonic.

    Many thanks, John, for these hymns/songs.

Comments are closed.