The hymn I picked for 24th August (blogging briefly and a day late) was “Christ, the way of life, possess me” by Timothy Dudley-Smith. The words look at four ways we can understand Christ, with the word ‘life’ as the thread holding them together: He is the ‘Way of life’ to guide me; ‘Well of life’ to keep me afresh with his love; ‘Tree of life’ which in Biblical symbolism is ‘for the healing of the nations’, therefore Christ as healer; and ‘Path of life’ to the eternal life beyond this one.
The common theme of ‘life’ is important, as we remind ourselves in singing this that we believe Jesus Christ still to be alive, though no longer physically present in the body. It is what sets Christianity apart from other religions and philosophies, that the eternal divine and its chief prophet are in fact the same.
Although I didn’t find anything to take exception to in this hymn, I feel bound to say that for me it lacked overall cohesion and unity. Yes, it has the four “somethings of life”, but to me it is not obvious that these titles all refer to Christ (as opposed to the Father, or to the Holy Spirit), nor why they have been chosen out of many other titles, nor indeed whether they are supposed to refer to Christ as opposed to other Persons of the Trinity. In verses 1,2 and 4 the “something of life” is addressed directly, but in verse 3 indirectly; in verses 1-3 it/he is asked to do something, but in verse 4 only permit something … in these kinds of ways I think the hymn lacks the finish of the usual Timothy Dudley-Smith lyrics. I even think there is a grammatical / phraseology difficulty in verse 2 line 2 with the “barren and bare” adjectives being split by the noun “soul” to which they refer, and I sung instead “make my soul, so dry and bare, like a watered garden”.
And I also didn’t warm to the tune, so wrote a different one.
Hard to please, aren’t I?