Hymns I Love

Many churches are still fighting the “hymns vs choruses” battle, and I have in the last couple of years joined one that has handled it in a prudent manner. I have a choice of attending a service where the music is the traditional hymns, or one where the music is contemporary with an occasional hymn that is usually more up tempo than the original. I have chosen the latter for a variety of reasons. . (I do find it ironic that those who are adamantly opposed to the “new” music have conveniently forgotten that many of our most beloved hymns started out as sacred words applied to popular saloon songs). But I find that in times of stress, I return to my roots, and my roots are in hymns

For example, the economic news today is not getting any better. I have Christian friends, whom I love dearly even though we have opposite political views, who seem happy that the market continues to reel under the new administration. They are evidently buying gold as a hedge against what they believe is a certain nationwide economic collapse. I don’t know enough about economics to know if they are right. I don’t know enough about economics to know which administration to blame. I don’t know if the meltdown will touch my seemingly impregnable State Teacher’s Retirement System. “I don’t know what the future holds…but I know Who holds the future.” That’s the hymn part. There’s probably a contemporary song that has the same message, but at age 60 I go with the familiar, and the familiar is established in hymns. We had another recently during our pastor’s “Spent” series. He is almost my age, and the hymn played for communion moved him so that he had to comment on it at its conclusion. “I sing because I’m happy. I sing because I’m free. For His eye is on the sparrow. And I know He watches me.”

We have a dear friend who just lost a dear friend to illness. She is grieving, and we are hurting for her. I’ve have lost very few people in life that are close to me, but I suspect that will change as I get older. When I am grieving for any reason, I usually wind up thinking of the lyrics of the song written over 100 years ago by Horatio Spafford. His wife and daughters were on an ocean voyage and the ship capsized. His daughters drowned. He took the next ship to England, and when the ship passed the spot where his daughters perished, he stood at the rail and wrote, “When sorrow like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well, with my soul.’”

I am a sinner saved by grace. I sometimes blow it. Through the books of people like Philip Yancey I have begun to understand just what the first sentence in this paragraph means. When I fail, and humble myself before my God, what happens? “He walks with me and He talks with me. And He tells me I am His own. And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.” If you are young and reading this, you probably have a newer song that does the same for you. But this one is so very special to me.

Our worship team occasionally begins the service with the hymn that begins, “I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene….” Ironically, they sing it much more slowly than the “original” version. And it’s beautiful. I think I sing alto when I sing along with them, because my mom was an alto and I remember standing next to her and singing it with her in church. How marvelous and how wonderful those memories.

It would be fun at some point to make a list of hymns that I love, and the contemporary song that conveys the same message. For example, the lines above from “In the Garden,” are very similar to “He Knows My Name.” “How Great Thou Art” is so similar to “How Great is Our God,” that arrangements put them together. I think I’ll make the list a retirement project.