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Hymn #32: How Deep the Father’s Love For Us

Sep16

Lyrics: Stuart Towend, 1995.

Music: Stuart Townend, 1995.

Theme:

Matt: “It struck me how utterly incapable we are of coming even remotely close to comprehending the infinite depth of God’s love for us.”

Mary Lynn: “I recently had a student sing this at school – I told her (before this survey) that this one would make my all-time-top-10 list.”

TheeEpiphany: “When I stop to remember His goodness, His patience with me, His everlasting love and promises, everything else seems so less worthy of my attention.”

Mark Moore: “I never thought about adoption as “paying a ransom”. It makes sense when you read passages in the New Testament that talk about us being “adopted” into God’s family. How did that happen? Jesus’ wounds paid our ransom!”

Stuart Townend: “I’d been meditating on the cross, and in particular what it cost the Father to give up his beloved Son to a torturous death on a cross. And what was my part in it? Not only was it my sin that put him there, but if I’d lived at that time, it would probably have been me in that crowd, shouting with everyone else ‘crucify him’. It just makes his sacrifice all the more personal, all the more amazing, and all the more humbling.

As I was thinking through this, I just began to sing the melody, and it flowed in the sort of way that makes you think you’ve pinched it from somewhere! So the melody was pretty instant, but the words took quite a bit of time, reworking things, trying to make every line as strong as I could.”

How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
And make a wretch His treasure!
How great the pain of searing loss!
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory.

Behold the man upon the cross,
My sin upon His shoulders.
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished.
His dying breath has brought me life;
I know that it is finished.

I will not boast in anything:
No gifts, no power, no wisdom,
But I will boast in Jesus Christ,
His death and resurrection.
Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer,
But this I know with all my heart:
His wounds have paid my ransom.

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer,
But this I know with all my heart:
His wounds have paid my ransom.

Such a new song to be so very popular! Such an old theme!

Hymn #33: Jesus Paid It All

Sep15

Lyrics: Elvina Hall, 1856.

Music: John T. Grape.

Theme: “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the LORD. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool’”. Isaiah 1:18.

Mr. Grape was a member of the same Methodist church in Baltimore that Elvina Hall attended. Their pastor, Rev. George W. Shreck, was the instrument to bring words and music together when he “called on me (Grape) to select anything new that I had to offer. On hearing this piece he expressed his pleasure with it and stated that Mrs. Elvina M. Hall had written some words that would just suit the music. I gave him a copy of it and it was soon sung in several churches here in Baltimore.”

(I’m hoping to become just such an instrument for my friend Hannah, even though I know nothing about selling or or produing music. If any of you know about uploading music to iTunes or Amazon and selling it through those sites, please email me at sherryDOTearlyATgmailDOTcom.)

I hear the Savior say,
“Thy strength indeed is small;
Child of weakness, watch and pray,
Find in Me thine all in all.”

Refrain:
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.

For nothing good have I
Whereby Thy grace to claim;
I’ll wash my garments white
In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb.

And now complete in Him,
My robe, His righteousness,
Close sheltered ’neath His side,
I am divinely blest.

Lord, now indeed I find
Thy pow’r, and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And melt the heart of stone.

When from my dying bed
My ransomed soul shall rise,
“Jesus died my soul to save,”
Shall rend the vaulted skies.

And when before the throne
I stand in Him complete,
I’ll lay my trophies down,
All down at Jesus’ feet.

OR

And when before the throne
I stand in Him complete
“Jesus died my soul to save”
My lips shall still repeat .

Hymn #34: ‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus

Sep14

Lyrics: Louisa M.R. Stead, 1882.

Music: William J. Kirkpatrick

Theme: Every word of God is flawless;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.
Proverbs 30:5

Louisa Stead lived an amazing life, one in which events must have tempted her many times to lose trust instead of resting upon His promise. And yet . . .

Louisa had always felt a calling to be a missionary and go to China. But due to fragile health she was kept home in the US. She married Mr. Stead, and the couple had a daughter named Lily. When Lily was four years old the family went on vacation to a nearby beach. While there, relaxing and enjoying their vacation, they saw a young boy drowning in the ocean. Mr. Stead swam out and tried to rescue him, but he was pulled under by the boy and both Mr. Stead and the boy drowned as Louisa and her daughter watched from shore. Louisa was left without any means of support except for God’s care. She and her daughter were in dire poverty. One day when there was no food in the house and no money to purchase any, Louisa opened the front door to find someone had left groceries and money sitting there for her. That same day she sat down and wrote “Tis so Sweet to Trust in Jesus.” She later became a missionary to Africa, remarried and once again was forced to return to the US due to her health. But once recovered she went back into the missionary field in Rhodesia and later died in Zimbabwe. Her daughter Lily married and became a missionary as well.

1. ‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,
and to take him at his word;
just to rest upon his promise,
and to know, “Thus saith the Lord.”
Refrain:
Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him!
How I’ve proved him o’er and o’er!
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus!
O for grace to trust him more!

2. O how sweet to trust in Jesus,
just to trust his cleansing blood;
and in simple faith to plunge me
neath the healing, cleansing flood!

3. Yes, ’tis sweet to trust in Jesus,
just from sin and self to cease;
just from Jesus simply taking
life and rest, and joy and peace.

4. I’m so glad I learned to trust thee,
precious Jesus, Savior, friend;
and I know that thou art with me,
wilt be with me to the end.

Peggy Nickles of Hymn Blessings sent me her list of favorite 10 hymns when I was taking votes back in May, and she told me about her new business. ‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus was on Peggy’s list, a combined list of her favorites and her customers’ most requested hymns. Here’s the short version of how she came to create Hymn Blessings:

“My collection of old hymn books, the ones in really bad shape with pages loose from their bindings, the ones that were battered, discarded, and rescued by me, were the inspiration for the first Hymn Blessing.

A loose page fell to the floor. I picked it up and found it to be one of my father’s favorite hymns Great Is Thy Faithfulness. I had an idea! I mounted the hymn on a very fine ivory linen card stock and painted my father’s favorite yellow roses around its borders. I slipped it into a warm, brown, wood frame, and later realized I had created the first Hymn Blessing.”

Submit your story about a favorite hymn before September 30, to be entered into a drawing to win your own Hymn Blessing.

Hymn #35: The Love of God

Sep13

Lyrics: Frederick Lehman, 1917.

Music: Frederick Lehman, arranged by his daughter, Claudia Mays.

Theme: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. John 15:9.

Frederick Lehman: “The profound depths of the lines moved us to preserve the words for future generations. Not until we had come to California did this urge find fulfillment, and that at a time when circumstances forced us to hard manual labor. One day, during the short intervals of inattention to our work, we picked up a scrap of paper and added the first two stanzas and chorus to the existing third verse lines.”

Brother Maynard calls this hymn “The Greatest Hymn Ever Written” and recounts the entire story of its genesis, a story that includes an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and poet, an anonymous inmate in an insane asylum, and Mr. Lehman, a Nazarne pastor and hymnwriter.

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
And pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.

When hoary time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall;
When men who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call;
God’s love, so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

I remember this hymn from earliest childhood because my mother used to hum and sing it frequently, and she still does. In fact, I heard her singing “It shall forevermore endure, the saints’ and angels’ song” just a couple of weeks ago in my car.

Yeah! Hooray! Calloo! Callay! It’s Time for Hymns Again!

Sep12

Hallelujah! I’m happy today. My Computer Guru Son tore my old computer apart, accessed the hard drive, and helped me download the information from my old (dead) computer into my new one. This blessed event means that I now KNOW what the final 35 hymns for the Top 100 Hymns Project are. And I can start counting them down again.

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So, starting tomorrow, for the next 35 days we will enjoy together the Top 35 Hymns chosen by the readers of this blog. Get ready to do some singing and praising and rejoicing. I may be a passionate reader, but I also like to sing, especially hymns of faith and praise to the God of Creation and to the Lord Jesus Christ, maker of words and music.

Where are the Hymns?

Aug28

Well, the sad ending to the story of the Sad Mac is that the Top 100 Hymns List is trapped inside my Mac. I have no way to transfer the informaiton inside the Mac to another computer until I buy another computer. The computer I’m working on now is a Dell running Windows, and it’s so buggy that it takes me twice as long to write a post as it would have taken on my Beloved Old Mac (BOM). Since it would cost about $1000 to (maybe) fix The BOM, and since I don’t have $1000 spare dollars to fix The BOM or to buy a new computer, I do not know what to do about the hymns project.

I do have some of the hymns with their places on the list because I had already started drafts of posts about them. I have 35 more hymns to count down, and of those I can probably reconstruct about 20. Should I post the ones I have? Should I wait and hope that a miracle will let me back inside The BOM? Should I undergo hypnosis in order to try to remember the names and places on the list of the missing hymns?

‘Tis a puzzlement.

Ramadan Prayer

Aug26

Sunday, August 22, was the beginning of the Muslim observance of Ramadan, a time of prayer and fasting for Muslims around the world. It was also the beginning of a now-annual effort on the part of Christians around the world to pray especially for Muslims. If you want to join in this concert of prayer during the 30 days of Ramadan, you can find a prayer guide here.

The first day’s devotional thoughts were particularly convicting and useful:

Faith is important, but do I also love Muslims? What is my
most profound reaction when I meet them, when I see them
on television? How would I react if a man in Islamic clothing
came to my church? How would I react if a new believer from
a Muslim background wanted to marry into my family? Would
I be willing to give a thousand dollars so someone could proclaim
the Gospel among Muslims? Would I be willing to sit and
eat with a Muslim in a crowded restaurant? Have I been involved
in criticizing them without knowing them? Am I fearful
of Muslims? Is my main attitude toward them one of mistrust?
Am I able to do as Jesus says, “You shall love your neighbor as
yourself”? Is this my desire, is this my goal?

I know that some Muslims might find this prayer focus offensive or patronizing. Please know that this time of prayer is about “Christians learning about, and praying for our world’s Muslim neighbors during their holy month of Ramadan; doing so in humility, and without fear or ill-intent.”

May God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, reveal Truth to us all and help us to know how to love each other.

From John Wesley’s Diary, 1768

Aug20

Greatly disgusted at the manner of singing. 1. Twelve or fourteen persons kept it to themselves, and quite shut out the congregation: 2. These repeated the same words, contrary to all sense and reason six or eight or ten times over: 3. According to the shocking custom of modern music, different persons sang different words at one and the same moment: an intolerable insult on common sense, and utterly incompatible with any devotion.” Excerpted from Abide With Me: The World of Victorian Hymns by Ian Bradley.

Mr. Wesley wrote this criticism after a preaching visit to a parish church in Neath. He sounds just like the twentieth and twenty-first century critics of contemporary praise and worship music. There’s nothing new under the sun, is there?

***********

I’m in a fine pickle as far as this hymn project is concerned—the reason you haven’t seen any new hymns in the Top 100 Hymn Project in the past few days. My computer, with the list of the survey results, died and won’t turn back on. The Apple store is holding my Mac hostage, and they say it may or may not be reparable. In the meantime, not only have I lost the survey results, I’ve also lost the syllabus and plans for the Texas history class that I’m supposed to teach for our homeschool co-op. I can’t get to our household budget, which was in dreadful need of revision anyway. All of my best recipes are inside that computer. All of the hymns I bought and loaded into iTunes as a result of the hymn project are trapped inside my Mac. I am bewildered and bumfuzzled, and I find myself exasperated with my own computer dependence.

Maybe there is something new under the sun, computer dependency, and it’s not good.

The people at the Apple store say they’ll give me a diagnosis and a verdict within a week to ten days.

Hymn #36: My Jesus, I Love Thee

Aug16

Lyrics: William Featherston, 1864.

Music: Adoniram Gordon, 1876.

Theme: The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. John 21:17

Center for Church Music: “My Jesus, I Love Thee” was written by a sixteen year old boy, William Ralph Featherston, at the time of his conversion to Jesus Christ. He sent a copy to his aunt who encouraged him to have it published. It appeared anonymously in The London Hymn Book in 1864. . . . William wrote no other hymns that we know of and his brief life ended just before his twenty-seventh birthday.

My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine;
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign.
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.

I love Thee because Thou has first loved me,
And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree.
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.

I’ll love Thee in life, I will love Thee in death,
And praise Thee as long as Thou lendest me breath;
And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow,
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.

In mansions of glory and endless delight,
I’ll ever adore Thee in heaven so bright;
I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.

There are a few hymns that I find myself singing while in prayer without even thinking about it: Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, Oh, How I Love Jesus, How Great Thou Art, and this one, My Jesus, I Love Thee. I think these three, and probably a few others that I’m not thinking of, are just spontaneously prayerful hymns. They express the the thoughts of my soul, and I sing them to the Lord without prompting, unless it’s the prompting of the Holy Spirit. What songs do you sing to the Lord when you’re alone with Him?

Hymn #37: For All the Saints

Aug15

Lyrics: William Walsham How, 1864.

Music: SARUM by Joseph Barnby (original tune).
Or (my favorite) SINE NOMINE by Ralph Vaughan WIlliams, 1906.

Theme: This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.”
“Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”
Revelation 14:12-13.

1. For all the saints, who from their labours rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
2. Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
3. For the Apostles’ glorious company,
Who bearing forth the Cross o’er land and sea,
Shook all the mighty world, we sing to Thee:
Alleluia, Alleluia!
4. For the Evangelists, by whose blest word,
Like fourfold streams, the garden of the Lord,
Is fair and fruitful, be Thy Name adored.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
5. For Martyrs, who with rapture kindled eye,
Saw the bright crown descending from the sky,
And seeing, grasped it, Thee we glorify.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
6. O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
All are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
7. O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
8. And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
9. The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
10. But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
11. From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

William How was a bishop in the Anglican church in Yorkshire. He served, appropriately enough, at the Cathedral of All Saints in Wakefield, and he was known for his work with the poor. He was known as the “omnibus bishop” because he preferred public transport to a private carriage. He also wrote over fifty hymns; the only other one I knew was Jesus, Name of Wondrous Love.

I love this hymn, mostly because of Vaughan Williams’s music which is absolutely beautiful and tuneful. The lyrics, too, are quite inspiring and memorable, but has anyone ever heard all eleven verses sung at one sitting?

Sources:
Clavis Regni: For all the saints who from their labors rest.
Wikipedia: For All the Saints.
Hymntime: For All the Saints.