How Great Thou Art

When my little niece Katie was just about 24 months old, I’d love to pick her up. She had just learned to talk around that time; she’d only say individual Chinese words here and there, mostly at random just to identify things she was pointing at. My sister-in-law, of course, was “mama”. She made up a new name for my brother--instead of the traditional “baba”, she called her dad “baaah beeee”! The word for “aunt” is “gu gu”, but since she couldn’t pronounce Gs, my sister was “doo dooooo!”. I, of course, was “suu suu”, or “uncle”.

One day we were in church…I was the only one in the room with her, so I picked her up to take her outside. As soon as I picked her up, I heard a little voice out of nowhere.

“suu suu how dwong!”

I turned around…wha? Who was that? Who said that? But there was no one around. Then I looked down into my arms. There was little Katie, her head just looking around at the sky.

Now, this is the first time I’d ever heard her put a complete sentence together. And the sentence translated into English goes something like, ahem, “Uncle is so strong!”

I chuckled at her and gave her a big hug…what a little flirt!

Funny thing is, the rest of the day, I felt really good. Now in actuality, I wasn’t really all that strong…she was about the size and weight of a small bag of supermarket rice at that point. But in her eyes, after I picked her up, I might as well have been Mr. Universe.

There is something very innocent and very precious about the praise of a child. It’s pure. There are no ulterior motives. Their ability to praise hasn’t been hindered by years and years of being whittled down by life. No one has to put them up to it. They just observe something, and say it.

I sometimes think. When we kneel down and pray before God, what do we say to him? Usually, we ask him for this, we complain about that, we stare at our watches to see if the twenty minutes we allotted to prayer are up. How sad he must feel sometimes.

What we need to do is to learn how to once again look at God through the eyes of a child. Imagine the joy we can bring to our Heavenly Father, How happy would he feel if we could just tell him how wonderful he is. If we could just blurt out, “God is so strong!” for no other reason except…He is.

From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise
-Matthew 21:16

1.
O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed!

Chorus
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

2.
When thru the woods and forest glades I wander
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze.

Chorus

3.
And when I think that God, His Son not sparing
Sent Him to die, I scare can take it in.
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin!

Chorus

4.
When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.
Then I shall bow in humble adoration
And there proclaim, my God, how great Thou art!

Chorus

Listen to the MIDI for How Great Thou Art

The Battle Hymn of the Republic

One of the best-loved hymns in history originally began with these words:

“John Brown’s body lies a-smoulderin’ in the grave.”

Sound familiar? No? How about this?

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord”.

Ah yes, that’s better. It’s “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. No doubt you’ve memorized the first stanza of the hymn. If not, at least you know the Refrain.

“Glory, Glory Hallelujah! His truth is marching on!”

I’ve become somewhat of a hymn geek lately, so one of the things I’d noticed was that the hymn tune name to the Battle Hymn of the Republic is “John Brown’s Body”. I looked it up, and found out that the song used to be a little ditty from the 19th century, popular around civil war times. John Brown was an abolitionist who led an unsuccessful insurrection to free slaves. He died, but as the ditty went, “his soul goes marching on.”

Julia Ward Howe happened to visit a Union Army camp one day, and heard the song. The next day, in the early morning before dawn, she woke up and scrawled the verses to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It’s a good thing she found the stump of a pen she was using before, or this tune and the poem in her mind would have been lost to obscurity.

The poem she wrote, of course, was inspired by the word of God. The second line, “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored” seems to be inspired by Revelation 14:19…”The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath”. The third line is from Ezekiel 21:9. “A sword, a sword, sharpened and polished—sharpened for the slaughter, polished to flash like lightning”. In the third stanza, which not many people know, she writes, “Let the Hero, born of women, crush the serpent with His heel”, from Genesis 3:15.

The hymn has become one of the most beloved hymns in history. You can hardly sing it without feeling excited about the coming day of Christ, without feeling the fear of God’s righteous judgement, without feeling the need to get yourself ready for the train a-coming.

And to think that it started as a little war camp ditty.

When my mom was still on the earth, she had a gift for counseling. To her last days, people would literally come to her for counsel and wisdom. Even as she lay in the hospital with cancer, a steady stream of people came to her hospital room. They came to visit her, but by the end of their visit, they were telling her about their problems and asking for advice.

I once asked her what her ‘approach’ was to pastoral work. I’ll never forget her answer. She said that too many people think you need to be versed in psychology, or to learn counseling techniques. Mom didn’t learn any of that—in fact, she was a chemist. What did she do when people came to her for advice? All she did was to sit with them, let them talk, and then share some scripture verses with them. She always seemed to have just the right verse for the occasion. Then, she would put them into prayer. Mom once told me that endless talk is worthless--because man can do nothing...only God can melt the human heart.

What’s the message here? Only this. The word of God is “living and active. Sharper than any two-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

Just as the word of God transformed this song, it can transform your life. If the Word of God is a part of you, your mundane, workaday job becomes a blessing, even a ministry to the co-workers around you. Casual, ordinary conversations with friends become blessings to them.

If we view Bible reading just as some kind of chore, forcing ourselves to read three chapters a day just so we can read through it once by the end of the year, that’s exactly what will happen. But if we read the Bible because we know that its words can transform our lives and help us be a blessing to those around us, that’s exactly what will happen too.

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1.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

2.
I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His day is marching on.

3.
I have read a fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;
“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal”;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Since God is marching on.

4.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet;
Our God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.

5. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free;
While God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
While God is marching on.

6.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave;
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.

Listen to the MIDI for The Battle Hymn of the Republic

This Is My Father's World

I went to the Huntington Library in Southern California one Sunday a few years ago. One of my dear friends, Professor Li of Cal State Long Beach, brought me there, accompanied by his wife and one of his fellow professors.

It was an awesome day. For literally the first time in the few months I'd been in Southern California, the sky was a clear blue (no smog!). The sun was out, and there was also a cool breeze.

We started with “English Tea”. To picture what this is, just imagine a Denny’s Grand Slam Breakfast. Then, imagine what the exact opposite of that is. Tea, finger sandwiches, cheese and crackers, and little fruit tarts with impeccably fresh fruit. Fancy-schmancy, to be sure, but to quote my little niece, “it was sooooo yummy”. And quite sophisticated!

Anyway, the Huntington Estate is a place to behold. I’ve been to other places like this in Russia, Paris, China and New York, but this one had its own uniqueness. Walking in, you immediately saw a bright arrangement of pansies and poppies in every color of the rainbow. There was a Japanese Tea Garden with a beautiful vista overlooking a pond with bright orange Koi fish. There was an herb garden where you could pick and smell herbs (I got to smell “hyssop” for the first time in my life). There’s the world’s biggest cactus garden with every variety of cacti you can imagine, in all kinds of intricate shapes and sizes and beautiful flowers. There were places where you could breathe in and experience absolutely glorious scents from fragrant flowers and plants.

I saw a hummingbird for about the second time in my life. As I pointed to it, it darted out of sight just as quickly as it appeared. There were beautiful bamboo stalks that were shiny and bright green, and about 10 inches in diameter. There was an incredible little red flower that consisted of two round petals, each interlocking perfectly symmetrical.
The magnolias were in full bloom, as were the azaleas and the pink cherry blossoms. The bright red Camellia flowers were too (I showed my cultural ignorance by failing to identify the tune that Professor Li was humming as from Verdi’s La Traviata, which of course was adapted from Dumas’ novel The Lady of the Camelias. Professor Li’s professor friend gave the right answer. Needless to say, I hung my head in shame).

After this, we went into a gallery with a nice art exhibition of British and American paintings of the 19th century. Some paintings were carefree, others deep and pensive, others downright disturbing. I’m no art aficionado, but looking at many of the paintings, I started to understand what the life of many of the artists must have been like. In so many cases, the artist put so much of himself into his painting that you could immediately understand a great deal about the artist just by looking at his work. Just by looking at different aspects of the painting, from the subject matter to the composition to even the individual brush strokes, you could glean clues about the artist himself.
Well, driving home that night, I saw a brilliant sunset over the mountains--the second beautiful sunset of that trip. And then it hit me.

Why do I love the natural world so much?

There are those who roll their eyes whenever I pontificate about a beautiful sunset or a sky full of stars. They tell me that these are just boring things that you can see anytime, and they don’t see the attraction. Then, they rush home to play their video games or watch TV. Well, I don’t fault these folks, but I wish they could understand what they’re missing.

I think I love nature so much because by looking at the creation, it tells me so much about the one who created it. God is the greatest artist ever. And God put so much of himself into everything that he created. He is in each flower petal and in each hummingbird and in the scent of a fresh rose and in the red hues of the sunset. And the most amazing thing is that he created these things out of love. He created these things for us. And while some try to understand God by doing deep research into theology or philosophy, sometimes I think you can learn a lot more about God just by opening your eyes and enjoying His creation.

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…

- Romans 1:20

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1.
This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.

2.
This is my Father’s world, the birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world: He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass;
He speaks to me everywhere.

3.
This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world: the battle is not done:
Jesus Who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.

4.
This is my Father’s world, dreaming, I see His face.
I ope my eyes, and in glad surprise cry, “The Lord is in this place.”
This is my Father’s world, from the shining courts above,
The Beloved One, His Only Son,
Came—a pledge of deathless love.

5.
This is my Father’s world, should my heart be ever sad?
The Lord is King—let the heavens ring. God reigns—let the earth be glad.
This is my Father’s world. Now closer to Heaven bound,
For dear to God is the earth Christ trod.
No place but is holy ground.

6.
This is my Father’s world. I walk a desert lone.
In a bush ablaze to my wondering gaze God makes His glory known.
This is my Father’s world, a wanderer I may roam
Whate’er my lot, it matters not,
My heart is still at home.

Listen to the MIDI for This Is My Father's World

Nearer, My God, To Thee

“Out of my stony griefs, Bethel I’ll raise”

This is the line that jumps out at me when I sing this hymn. The words are by Sarah F. Adams, inspired by the words of Genesis 28. Sarah Adams was no stranger to suffering. Her mother died when she was 5 years old. Her dream was to be an actress, not because she wanted attention, but because she felt that could be a ministry to people. But her health prevented her from doing this, so she turned to writing. She wrote this hymn at the age of 36. She died seven years later of tuberculosis.

The hymn itself has a storied history. In 1901, President McKinley, after being fatally shot, was reported to have said as his last words “‘Nearer, my God, to Thee, e’en though it be a cross’ has been my constant prayer”. In 1912, survivors of the Titanic recounted that this is what the ship’s band played as they knew they were dying.

But when you sing the lyrics of the hymn, you’ll find that it’s not so much about dying, as it is about living. About new beginnings. About brushing the dust off and going on.

The inspiration for this hymn was Genesis 28.

Jacob had just left home for the first time. He had just left his family. The brother he had grown up with now wanted to kill him. His mother told him to leave home because of that. His father’s health was ailing.

So, he set out, not sure of what was in store for him. Years later, he would refer to these days as “the day of my distress”.

Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.

For all of his life, Jacob had been surrounded by his family, by servants, by animals, by good food, by a life filled with all his heart desired. Now, for the first time, he was alone, with nothing. He found a stone to use as a pillow and slept on the ground. One can only imagine how many tears this young man, suddenly so alone in the world, shed on that stone as he fell asleep.

And that’s when God gave him His promise. “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.”

Jacob did something right. He woke up, and then he took the stone on which he was sleeping, and he built an altar. He made a vow. He vowed that if the Lord did all He said, then the Lord would be his God, and the stone he set up would be God’s house (Beth-El), and he would dedicate a tenth of all he was given to the Lord.

As I write this, I am still reeling from a broken engagement. I am in the process of moving to a new state. So these words have special significance to me, just as they did when I read them after I first left home eighteen years ago, and when my mom passed away fourteen years ago, and my dad passed away two years ago.

Perhaps you’re in a similar situation. If you’re not, you will be, probably many times in your life. And when you are, read these words again. But instead of reading the ones that God said to Jacob, read the ones that His son says to you:

And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20).

If you’ve encountered a tremendous loss, a loss beyond what words can express, nothing anyone says or does can bring what you’ve lost back. But where to go from here is your choice.

You have two choices. You can continue to wallow in self-pity and regret. You can dwell on the past, trying whatever you can do to conjure back a past which is gone forever. Trust me, I know the temptation is great to do this.

Or you can wake up, and remember what it is that the Lord told you. And from there, you can make a new beginning. You can take your stony griefs and raise your own Bethel, the house of God, in your heart.

What does this mean? Well, there’s an interesting thing about enduring terrible loss. Prayer suddenly becomes a lot easier. Why? Because it’s only in the rough times that we realize that only God has the ability to understand us and help us. Like Joseph took that heavy stone on which he laid his head, take your griefs and lay them before God.

Use them to build that altar--that marker in the ground which marks the first day of a new beginning.

No matter what has happened in the past, no matter what mistakes you’ve made, or losses you’ve endured…there’s one thing you can do. Make a clean new start. Pray a prayer like Jacob did. Ask God to watch over you on the journey you are taking. Ask God to give you what you need to sustain you through the journey, wherever it takes you.

Years later, Jacob returned to that same spot. Only this time, he returned married, children in tow, having been blessed immeasurably by God. It was here that he looked back and thought back to that day as a young man when he slept alone on this ground. He knew that God had indeed been with him wherever he had gone. And it was not long after that when Jacob was renamed Israel by God, and that he heard from God Himself how vast his descendants would be, and how from him nations and kings would come.

Whatever state you’re in today, sing this hymn. Think of how despite the loss you’ve gone through, that out of your stony griefs, God is waiting to hear that prayer from you. That prayer that turns to him for help. That prayer that says that you wish nothing more than to be Nearer to Him and to have Him be with you…from your own Bethel to the end of the age.

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1.
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee.

Refrain
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!

2.
Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,
Darkness be over me, my rest a stone.
Yet in my dreams I’d be
Nearer, my God to Thee.

Refrain

3.
There let the way appear, steps unto Heav’n;
All that Thou sendest me, in mercy given;
Angels to beckon me
Nearer, my God, to Thee.

Refrain

4.
Then, with my waking thoughts bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs Bethel I’ll raise;
So by my woes to be
Nearer, my God, to Thee.

Refrain

5.
Or, if on joyful wing cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot, upward I’ll fly,
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee.

Refrain

6.
There in my Father’s home, safe and at rest,
There in my Savior’s love, perfectly blest;
Age after age to be,
Nearer my God to Thee.

Refrain

Listen to the MIDI for Nearer My God to Thee

Welcome to the NameThatHymn.Com Blog!

Welcome to the NameThatHymn.Com blog.

This is going to be a very sporadically updated blog site, with devotionals on life, inspired by some favorite Christian hymns.

Enjoy :)
Steve