Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “O the mercy of God” by Geoff Bullock. Carrying on where I left off yesterday, in a way, with the uniqueness of Christ as the fulness of God appearing in humanity, especially in the last verse “O the glory of God expressed in his Son”. The other verses celebrate the mercy of God in calling us to forgives and restoration although we didn’t deserve it, and the depths of his love, making us righteous.
I’m not terribly impressed with this hymn, as it seems to be cobbling together plenty of standard phrases from Christian theology without really developing an overall theme, or If there is one I’ve missed it.
I agree that this hymn seems largely a cobbling together of good phrases from other places, and I also very much missed any attempt to rhyme in the words. It put me in mind of several other hymns in which the thoughts are expressed.
And I also wasn’t terribly impressed with the arrangement of the tune: the bass and harmonies seemed wooden at some places, and this, combined with the difficulty of having to turn the page in the middle of the chorus, made me write out the melody and words and play chords by ear as I went along, rather than using the music. Surely bar 7 (“-give and re-“) should be an Em or Em7 chord rather than reverting to the tonic D in its first inversion? And surely the D in bar 29 (which is part of the C2 chord of bar 28) obscures the effect – shouldn’t bars 28-29 have a simple C chord instead of the C2?
But I did feel that despite these difficulties of the arrangement, the tune itself was rousing and made for a good sing. I could see myself using this tune again in worship.