I visited my former pastor today. He has gone through terrible circumstances in the past few years, events which finally led to the death of his beautiful wife in November 2006, of cancer. This man has watched his wife suffer -- and he suffered along with her. And now he suffers alone. Truly, this man is someone I can look at and KNOW that he knows sorrow and loneliness like few other American "Christians" do. We encouraged one another and he prayed for me something very specific: That I would have a song.
I was known at that church for singing. I have not been able to sing for a couple of months, not really anything beyond a sort of warbling effort with no heart. He didn't know this. I didn't tell him.
I left that church and managed to sing through most of the day, songs which came flooding back to me. Ah, what a blessed gift music is! And then I spend most of my night listening to other songs with a friend (through the wonders of IM's and a semi-common music library).
I just have to share that some of the most praising, most uplifting hymns were written by people who had gone through unimaginable circumstances. This one, a song of thanksgiving, was written by pastor Martin Rinkart soon after he buried 4000 people in one year, including his wife, after the plague swept through Europe. Fifty funerals a day! And one of my favorites was written by a man after marking the spot in the open sea where his daughters had perished in a shipwreck. The opening lyrics "When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll" take on such personal meaning when you know.
Today's hymn for me is an oldie but a goodie:
Come, thou fount of every blessing,
Teach my heart to sing thy praise.
Streams of mercy never ceasing
flow from thy undending grace.
Teach me some melodious sonnet
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it -
Mount of thy redeeming love
Oh, to grace how great a debtor
quickly I'm constrained to be!
May thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander- Lord, I feel it-
Prone to leave the one I love.
Take my heart, Lord.
Take and seal it.
Seal it to thy courts above.
3 comments:
Just this morning I was reading Psalms 126, it's only six verses and it talks about singing with joy after sowing in tears. I was really moved by that and thought about how I am longing for those songs of joy to be birthed in my heart as well. Maybe we can write some joyous songs together. Love you.
I think it's peculiar to the Christian faith that people write songs of praise and thanks in times of disaster. Many excellent hymns have been written because the author threw his troubles at Jesus' feet, and the joy amidst sorrow flowed over into beautiful music.
Excellent recordings on that site. Sympathetic, skilful, and produced for love not money. Thanks for bringing it to my attention - I'd never heard of that site before now.
That song, Now Thank We All Our God, is quite familiar to me, as we used to sing it in the church where I grew up. I didn't really like any of the songs we sang in that church. I believe we sang this one in German. Which means I didn't really even understand it and I certainly didn't know the story behind it. Now that I do, reading those lyrics is quite powerful.
Hey, are you going to see that movie, Amazing Grace? I'm curious about it. I think Kyle and I will go. I said to him just yesterday how so many of those old hymns have such wonderful stories behind them. Good stories make for good movies, I think. I hope. We'll see!
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