Today’s hymn from Sing Praise, like yesterday’s is a Trinitarian one beginning “Father, Lord”. In this instance it’s “Father, Lord of earth and heaven” by James Quinn. The structure of the words seems to be based on the phrase from the Nicene creed that the Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son” (which allegedly was the reason for the Roman Catholic church splitting from Orthodoxy a thousand years ago, though I’m sure it was more complex than that). Otherwise, the words, to me, were rather predictable as it regurgitates familiar ideas rather than coming up with any new insight.
It also doesn’t come with its own tune, and although the 87.87 metre would fit any of numerous tunes in a standard hymnal, the suggested tune (Stuttgart) is not very exciting either. So I didn’t get much from this hymn to share with you, other than that having asked the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to come to us, in the last verse we ask them/him to “stay among us and dwell within us”. Knowing God and receiving the Spirit should be a state of being rather than an occasional encounter, although few people could claim that is their everyday experience.
As Stephen says, this hymn, albeit that it has a trinitarian structure, is essentially only one prayer: that God would give us his Spirit. The Spirit is viewed as essentially a gift given to the Church corporately, and the “Church” in question (with its capital “C”) highlights the fact that the author is a conservative Roman Catholic. There’s only one line about individuals as opposed to the corporate body (“set our hearts on fire with love”), and in the final verse God is “among” us. The cynic in me wonders if the final line means that the Spirit’s role in the Church is to quash dissention and variety and steamroller the unity which leads to uniformity?