Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me

Church of St Mary, Hawksworth Wood, Leeds. Built 1935 in a traditional style (see text below)

Today’s song from Sing Praise is “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me” by Daniel Iverson.  The words are simple – that phrase is repeated in the second and fourth lines, the third being “break me, melt me, mould me, fill me”.

This song, then, is an invocation of the Spirit to come and change us. Not just slightly but completely, broken and recast in a new shape like recycled pottery or glass. It fitted very well the ecumenical and charismatic atmosphere of the Christian Union when I was at university in the early 1980s so it isn’t surprising that the song was popular then. What is surprising is to see that it was written in 1935, at a dark time in history with depression and the threat of war, a time when the Church was not associated with radical change (you only have to look at the architecture of most 1930s church buildings to see this). When the world emerged from war a decade later, some church congregations settled back into their old ways, but others let the Spirit remould them into a new form.

That process of recycling or remoulding needs to be repeated, whenever we get settled into too easy a path in the Christian life or find ourselves resistant to change. Maybe the present time of emerging from pandemic will be an opportunity for such radical change.  This Pentecost let us sing these hymns with every expectation that our sung prayers will be answered.

One thought on “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me”

  1. I have always been struck by a jazz tune for this hymn, which expands the third line slightly: “You can break me, melt me, mould me; but please please fill me”. The purpose of all this interior change is not change for change’s sake, but for improvement and better service as an agent of God in the world.

Comments are closed.