(c) Stephen Craven
Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Eternal light, shine in my heart” by Christopher Idle. John noted in Morning Prayer that this is actually an evening hymn, but as it makes reference to light and brightness it seems equally applicable to morning use. John also set it to the tune of ‘Colours of Day’ which certainly is a morning hymn.
The most frequent word in this hymn, though, is ‘eternal’, used nine times. The Almighty is addressed as the eternal light, hope, power, wisdom, life, brightness, Spirit, Saviour and God. I’m reminded that the Biblical vision of eternal life is of a place where, in the words of another hymn, “they need no created light” for Christ is “its sun which goes not down”. And as it says in Psalm 139 “the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
The image I selected for today was taken when visiting Christian development projects in India some years ago. I have a framed print of it, with the words of Proverbs 4:18, “the path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter until the full light of day.” If we have eternal life, then evening and morning are equally times to praise God for his spiritual enlightenment.
This hymn is set to a tune with an odd rhythm in the “Sing Praise” book, and to two other odd tunes in “Hymns for Today’s Church” – and I couldn’t really make any of them work, so I decided to cheat and use “Colours of Day”: I’m pleased you liked it, Stephen. Christopher Idle has written quite a number of metrical settings of ancient hymns (there’s another tomorrow), and I think this one works moderately well, but it is quite hard to see how the stresses in the word “Eternal” would most naturally be set to music, and the fact that the second word in the line is sometimes monosyllabic and sometimes bisyllabic is a further complication. Maybe it needs its own tune, but I am trying to get organized for half-term and I am too busy to write one.