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Health & Fitness

Um...what's that hymn again? (Or, why doesn't anyone sing the old hymns in church anymore?)

Went to church this morning, and since Friday was All Saints' Day, during the worship service we remembered the people in our lives who had died within the past year and had an impact on our faith journey and in our every day lives. While paging through the bulletin before the service started, I noticed the closing hymn entitled When Life Well Lived is at an End. The words were unfamiliar to me, and maybe to many others in the congregation this morning. But when our organist played the opening measures, I immediately recognized the hymn tune Kingsfold, a traditional English melody adapted by Ralph Vaughn Williams and is strikingly similar to the tune of the Irish ballad The Star of the County Down. The lyrics to the hymn we sang today and sheet music of the hymn are posted on the web link below for you to look at as well as Van Morrison and The Chieftains' video for Star of the County Down.  I have also heard the tune used as a setting for a more well known hymn called I Heard The Voice of Jesus Say Come Unto Me and Rest. (Michael Card's version is also posted at the end of the post.) Although I was unfamiliar with the hymn we sang today, I liked it because at least I knew the tune. 

But the hymn got me thinking about what it really means to praise God in song. Many churches often are engaged in what has been called the worship wars, often over "traditional" forms of worship such as liturgies, hymns written by Fanny Crosby or Martin Luther, and organs and pianos versus more "contemporary" worship styles that incorporate many of the songs played on Christian radio stations by singers such as Amy Grant, Kerrie Roberts, The Newsboys, and Building 429. In fact, while Jordan UCC has a more liturgical style of worship and though we did sing two familiar hymns to most people my grandparents' age this morning (Blessed Assurance and For All The Saints), you are more likely to sing a mixture of songs if you worship into the Baptist church I previously attended before going to Jordan-- everything from Chris Tomlin's rendition of Amazing Grace to the Casting Crowns song "Who Am I?" to a more traditional hymn such as Come Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy.

To be honest with you, it really saddens me that many people just quit singing when they can't sing their favorite songs in church. But I wonder if it breaks God's heart even more than it breaks mine. Yes, it was a stretch for me to learn some new lyrics this morning and it would have been an even bigger stretch for me to learn it if I had not been familiar with the music prior to singing the hymn.

However, I truly believe that verses in the Bible which tell us to sing God's praises such as Ephesians 5:15-20 or 1 Chronicles 16:9 really have to be taken seriously. I'm getting better at getting OUT of my worship rut (which can seem like an old, comfortable easy chair), and learn some new songs as well as continue to sing more familiar ones because our songs of praise to God are often like our prayers. If they become too familiar to us, we can often lose the point of a song or a prayer in recognizing and honoring the holy God who created us. Sometimes new songs can help us understand how to pray to God or understand more of what a particular passage in the Bible is talking about. At the same time, both the familiar hymns I've grown up singing and my favorites from Christian radio often pop into my head when I don't know what else to say to God in the midst of a devastating time in my life or when nothing else can express my gratitude and thankfulness to God for his blessings in my life.

That being said, I'm looking forward to next week's worship service at church. Will I see you there with an open hymnal and an open mouth, mind, and heart praising God? I hope so, and you're welcome to sit next to me, too!

When Life Well Lived is at an End: 
http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/205056.pdf

Star of the County Down: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GbdB7PlGtc

I Heard The Voice of Jesus Say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ui3KvfsMZw


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