Our hymnals are prayer books and theological textbooks. Our hymnals give us words to sing and teach/tell us truths that soak/saturate our soul every time we draw a breath to let the tune and text married together fall from our lips.
What is one hymn this week you could return to everyday as a prayer?
Maybe initially you think of the classics ~ What a Friend We Have in Jesus or Sweet Hour of Prayer or I Need Thee Every Hour. If you laid those three hymns side-by-side or sung them one-after-another, you would start to hear the theological threads that connect them. Prayer is a rhythm, routine, where we take our ‘trials, temptations, troubles, to God”. Where we do this every hour, especially now as the new cycle churns chaotically every time we turn on the television, radio, or refresh our newsfeed. As Sweet Hour of Prayer preaches, proclaims, “In seasons of distress and grief, (I am looking at you, Year of 2020!) my soul has often found relief and oft escaped the tempter’s snare by your return sweet hour of prayer.” Such a sentiment is echoed in I Need You Every Hour, the third verse, “I need You every hour, in joy or pain, come quickly and abide or life is vain.”
I pray you are starting to sense the power of hymns. They are not just interludes to break up the spoken words of worship. They are more than entertaining, hymns engage our mind, body, and soul. Hymns cause the synapsis of our minds to stir in ways that spoken words struggle to accomplish. When you sing, you engage your whole body. And our souls spark with feelings of being strangely warmed.
When we read hymns – slowly and prayerfully – some of the same effect can happen within us, especially if we read the hymns out loud.
What is one hymn this week you could return to everyday as a prayer?
Not just to read in your silently, but aloud. Perhaps you can read the hymn aloud inside, or go outside to tell the trees around your home. You may want to whisper like you are saying these words to the deepest part of your heart or shout time as if directing all the energy in your body toward making these words a reality.
The hymn I will return to this week as a prayer is O Grant us, God, a Little Space (#516 in the New Century Hymnal). I find especially verses two and three singing to my soul today:
“Around us rolls the ceaseless tide of business, toil, and care, And scarcely can we turn aside for one brief hour of prayer.”
“Yet this is not the only place your presence may be found, On daily work you shed your grace, and blessings all around.”
I commit, covenant to coming back to these words several times today and throughout the week. To let these words teach me; try to sing the melody; and sit with what stirs within me. I pray you will find a hymn that can ground and guide you this week prayerfully and faithfully.
Prayer: Conducting God, open my ears to hear and heart to be warmed by the marriage of tune and text as I pray the hymnal this week. Amen.
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