I’m writing a single blog post today (28 January, though you probably won’t see it until the 29th) covering two adjacent songs in the Sing Praise book: numbers 129 and 130, “Behold, behold, I make all things new” and “Take, O take me as I am”. This is because there are several similarities between them: both are short meditative choruses intended to be sung repeatedly, both are set in three or four parts for different voices, both take the theme of making a new start, and perhaps not surprisingly therefore, they are by the same composer (John Bell). I’m also familiar with both of them: the second is a favourite with our church music group, and I think I came across “Behold, behold” when I attended a singing workshop led by John Bell himself a few years ago. They are short enough to reproduce the text in full here.
Take, O take me as I am, summon out what I shall be;
Set your seal upon my heart and live in me.
With these songs we come to the end of the theme of ‘Christian initiation’. The second song develops this theme as we ask Jesus to take us as we are, but to move us on, by ‘summoning out’ what he wanted us to be all along. “Set your seal upon my heart” is a reference to the Song of Songs, that great romantic poem attributed to Solomon, but often seen by Christians as an allegory of Christ’s love for his disciples and ours for him. To turn to Christ is not simply assenting to a set of beliefs or a commitment to try and keep certain rules, but to make a commitment based on love just as strong as that which leads to marriage.
Behold, behold, I make all things new,
Beginning with you, and starting from today.
Behold, behold, I make all things new,
My promise is true, for I am Christ the Way.
The “starting from today” is the same sort of idea as “take me as I am”. Christians talk of conversion as a “kairos moment” from a Greek word meaning the time when opportunities arise, the “right time” to make a change or start something new. It doesn’t matter what state your life is in right now, if the time feels right then start from where you are, here, now, today, and let Christ make you new. As John points out in the service where he uses this song, the text is based on 2 Corinthians 5:17 – “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation”, the implication being that the old creation, the old self, the old life no longer matters.
These two songs then, taken together, help us to make that commitment of letting Jesus take us as we are and make something new of us.