Monthly column on hymns and songs

A text whose time has come?

Once every so often you meet a hymn that demonstrates single-handedly that the hymn writing age is not over. Even today a potential masterpiece may be fashioned for churches yet unborn to inherit.

Such riches do not come out of the blue. They often emerge after years of grafting away at acceptable but lesser lines, as someone's skill slowly approaches that special standard granted to a few of God's creative children. Contrary to legend, the Lord does not 'inspire' writers by using them as mere pens in his hand, or even word processors at his desk.

The hymns I am describing rarely yield all their riches instantly, though when you hear one in the great congregation you want to go back to ponder and savour and sing it again sometime. It rings true to Scripture and experience, showing the former from a new perspective and lifting us beyond anything we have personally felt before.

I think of the Christmas hymn 'A stable lamp is lighted' by the American Richard Wilbur: hardly new, since it dates from 1960, but which we have been slow to recognise. Not all treasure is spotted immediately! Or the Englishman W.H. Vanstone's extraordinary 'Morning glory, starlit sky', whose landscaped opening gives no hint of the doctrine to come. When it does, we find ourselves asking: 'Wait! Do I really believe that?' Most evangelical editors decide they don't. The best response is to encourage doubters to read the book containing the poem in its original form: 'Love's endeavour, Love's expense'.

Local Songs of Praise

So where am I taking you this month? Recently I hesitantly offered to contribute to a local Songs of Praise service; not the souped-up TV variety, but a live event down the road at St. Mary's. I hoped that others would fill the programme without my help, but as the date loomed and the hymn sheet stayed blank, my substitute came off the bench. So we sang that wonderful hymn by Thomas Troeger, 'Above the moon earth rises'. Got that? Typical Troeger, who also wrote 'The hands that first held Mary's child'. Whose hands? Joseph's, of course; here is a writer who brings a fresh perspective to the old, old story.

We weren't present beside the manger; we have not personally stood on the moon. But God was, and has, and by his grace our sanctified imaginations can take us there. With the 'earthrise' text we immediately encounter verse which could have been written in no other generation but ours. Beware 'new' hymns which look as if they have been around for 300 years! The secret of timelessness is not to obliterate any contemporary feel, but to enjoy the present as God's gift to us - to none before us but to many who come after.

Earth's fragility

If Troeger owes a debt to his predecessors, it is Isaac Watts whose majestic 'creation' hymns picture our globe hanging in the canopy of space. He loves to relate that to the even greater divine work of redemption by Christ. What he could not know, and Troeger does, is how fragile this earth is, how vulnerable to destruction by its own noblest species homo sapiens. And how we need to hear that message in a petrol-guzzling, speed-crazy, power-worshipping age which has given road-rage, AIDS and chemical warfare to the English vocabulary. Yet the hymn is no angry shriek, but a beautifully flowing, reverent song by a master at his craft.

Is there a Songs of Praise near you soon? Let me commend No. 249 in Common Praise (the latest Ancient and Modern). A familiar tune would do; but just for once you could risk launching it, as in the book, to 'Sally Gardens'.

A text whose time has come?

A text whose time has come?

Local Songs of Praise

Earth's fragility

Christopher Idle

Main Articles

Other articles