Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Come, Light of the World’ by Paul Inwood. It was new to me, and not easy to sing from sight unaccompanied, so I needed to hear John playing and singing it to pick up the tune properly.
The five verses each begin with that invocation ‘Come’, which places it firmly within the spirit of Advent. The five ways in which Christ is addressed are ‘Light of the world’, ‘Strength of our days’, ‘Joy for the world’, ‘Hope of the world’ and ‘Spirit of God’ (the last not being strictly addressed to Christ, except in so far as the Spirit ‘proceeds from the Father and the Son’ – but let’s not reopen that old argument!)
Likewise, in the course of these five verses we ask him to bless us in various ways: to dispel our darkness and be our light; to fill us with courage to follow him; to bring us together with singing, laughter and warmth in our lives; to heal our sorrow and bring us peace; and for the Spirit to fill us with truth, lighten our lives and inspire all we do.
It is, as John remarked, a very positive hymn, not at all in the penitential style of many Advent hymns, yet consistent with the Advent hope of one who is coming to change things for the better. Perhaps it’s just what we need at the moment, when the world is full of fear, hatred and disaster: not another reminder that we are sinners but a reminder that Christ comes to bring fulness of life.
As Stephen says I thought this was a very positive hymn in its overall mood, and on that basis it can be forgiven a multitude of sins. Yet there were sins, and I suppose I thought the complexity of the piano arrangement with its quavers against the triplet-crotchets of the melody was really quite counter-productive in the sense that it puts people like Stephen off from singing it.
(It also meant a page-turn, or a trip to the photocopier for people like me!) The thing to do is to ignore the accompaniment in one’s mind.
In the lyrics, I didn’t really see what the match-up between the title “Light / Strength / Joy …” and the following petition was in the later verses, and found myself wondering “why THESE words?”. At first I couldn’t work out why line 2 always ended in “hearts” no matter what line 5 ended with … and then, when I’d got used to that, suddenly verse 5 was different – why is that? Likewise, in verses 1 and 2, line 5 has the same word repeated (light – light; strength – strength) and then suddenly the pattern is gone – again, why? These things made me feel that although it was positive, it wasn’t quite properly worked-out.
And on the tune, the ear gets used to anything with enough repetitions, so by the time I came to sing the hymn I had practised and got used to the tune – but actually the interval between line 3 and line 4 (the two short lines) of the verse is rather counter-intuitive. By the end of line 4 one expects a further departure into a new chord before a return to the home key, and it’s rather an anticlimax to have line 5 beginning just as lines 1 and 2 began. And isn’t the end delayed by a needless extra bar?
I think when I called it a “positive ditty”, I meant both of those words!
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P.S. We are all in the Father’s hands, but that newborn baby in the picture is incredibly large, compared to the adults!