Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Fill your hearts with joy and gladness” by Timothy Dudley-Smith. This is put in the ‘harvest thanksgiving’ section of the hymn book, so I thought the start of September, the ‘Creation season’ in the Church, would be a suitable time for it.
The hymn as a whole is based on Psalm 147 which in the NRSV Bible is subtitled “Praise for God’s care for Jerusalem”. It’s really only the third verse that is about harvest and all that’s needed for a successful one: “Praise the Lord for times and seasons, cloud and sunshine, wind and rain … grass upon the mountain pastures, golden valleys thick with grain”. The first verse does also have a creation aspect as it praises God as creator of the “starry heavens”.
The second verse is more about the fact that this creator God has a relationship with people. “Wounded souls his comfort know; those who fear him find his mercies, peace for pain and joy for woe; humble hearts are high exalted, human pride and power laid low”. The last verse reminds us that peace and prosperity are dependent upon society following God’s laws and walking in his ways. In fact this psalm, and much of the Bible, is addressed to all God’s people rather than to the individual. The modern ‘Western’ reading of the Bible as an instruction manual for individuals misses much of the point that it requires the whole of a society to buy in to a religious or political philosophy of the common good, for it to flourish. The ‘prosperity gospel’ (believe in Christ and follow his teaching, and you’ll become wealthy) makes sense at a societal level, and if wealth is understood in a much wider sense than mere monetary value, but not at the level of the individual.
This hymn comes in Mission Praise (cunningly, as number 147!) so it is one we’ve used a few times at St Luke’s Eccleshill, and I welcome it. I think there are some weaknesses – I think “your God and mine” is a bit odd (but makes the rhyme), and “peace for pain and joy for woe” is a little artificial, and “to melt the snows of winter till the waters flow” is a bit odd (shouldn’t it be SO the waters flow again?), and how is grass a season?, and how does the grammar of the last two lines work? But none of these is a serious flaw, and the hymn works well as a metrical Psalm, which is what we use it for.