First, check out this hymn :
Hast Thou Heard Him, Seen Him?
anonymous early 20th century hymn (alt. Kevin Twit)
1. Hast thou heard Him, seen Him, known Him?
Is not thine a captured heart?
Chief among ten thousand own Him;
Joyful choose the better part
Chorus: Captivated by His beauty
Worthy tribute haste to bring;
Let His peerless worth constrain thee
Crown Him now unrivaled King.
2. What can strip the seeming beauty
From the idols of the earth?
Not a sense of right or duty
But the sight of peerless worth
3. ‘Tis the look that melted Peter
‘Tis the face that Stephen saw
‘Tis the heart that wept with Mary
Can alone from idols draw
That's pretty much the biznomb. It's a great example of how sometimes a few lines of poetry can say what it would take several paragraphs of prose to communicate. Kevin Twit (the Indelible Grace mastermind) posted it on his blog (and the full original text is included in the post as well).
Second, Brian Moss posted his version of "In the Cross of Christ I Glory" on his blog for downloading. The CD it was on is now out of print, so he decided to give it away. The lyrics are a bit cryptic, but I like the idea of the hymn--namely, that the cross is neither made void by bad times nor made unnecessary by good times. It's similar to the idea communicated by that Matt Redman song, "Blessed Be Your Name," only it centers around the cross instead of my resolve. With some explanation (always a good thing), this could be a useful, meaningful congregational song.
3 comments, questions, or snide remarks:
Wow. I love these hymns. Only to be so captivated by His beauty.
Great posts, Wes!
Amen.
I agree that there need to be more Christ centered hymns/praise songs, that most of the stuff coming out today is more man centered than the great hymns of the past. And after reading "Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down" I feel even more that way.
My only hesitation comes from the example found in the Psalms. Over and over we read "I will praise the Lord"; "I will not be moved"; "I will bow in reverence," etc.
Where do you feel the balance lies between personal declarations of love for and devotion to God (which honors Him more than duty--see Piper's, Lewis', Edwards', Augustine's, and Paul's theology) and beautiful poetic descriptions of the glory of God's character and the wondrous things He has done?
It lies exactly... here. (Unfortunately, you can't see where I'm pointing.)
I'm with you on your hesitation to outlaw "I will"-type songs (which are modeled in the Bible) simply based on someone's idea that that kind of lyric is man-centered. Actually, I've always been uncomfortable with people's generalized comments about the God-centered hymns of the past versus the man-centered songs of today, because the arguments is usually made that the old songs had pronouns like "he" and "you", whereas today's songs almost exclusively employ the pronouns "I" and "me". That's simply not true. Look at the oldest psalters and you'll see that the versions are often in the first person because they are being faithful to the original psalm texts, which are in the first person.
I once heard a worship leader say that he thought that in the psalms David was not so much triumphally proclaiming his faithfulness with his "I wills", but instead he was more preaching to himself, as if he was in the act of resolving to do that act of faithfulness. I don't know how true that is, but the thought makes sense, especially with reference to how we are to sing that kind of lyric.
So, no, I'm not making an argument that we should ban all "I will" lyrics, nor even that we should ban all worship lyrics that somehow involve "I" or "me". Did this question come to mind because I was dogging on the other version of Come Ye Sinners (which has an "I will" chorus)? I definitely would be uncomfortable with a whole entire set of songs that only talked about what I was going to do and never talked about why. When I get a chance, I'll post on why I think that, because this is something I've been planning to post on anyway.
Good thoughts, George.
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