Open Hymnals Part 7

 

We wrap up and wind down another week.  There is much more we could continue to explore around our hymnal as a prayer book, theological textbook, and story it seeks to tell us.  But it is good to take a breath and hold lightly where we have been this week.

Over the few posts, we built upon truths that we can pray our hymns.  We have leaned in, listened to what hymns are telling us about God.  And we begun to look at how our hymnal is telling a narrative. 

What is one truth you learned this week?  Something new or something that you knew but have reclaimed?

How was praying one hymn every day?  What did that do?  Did you find yourself saying the hymn when stopped at a red light?  Or repeating it as a refrain to order your day?  Do you want to keep praying that hymn or choose another?  There are no “right” answers, just what your soul says, “Amen” to right now.

What other creative ways can you engage your hymnal?

You could randomly open the hymnal every day, read the hymn – slowly and prayerfully – or be brave/bold to sing it.  Then, pause to ask yourself, how did that action make a difference?

You could start at the beginning of the hymnal, read one hymn each day.

You could make a prayer practice of calling someone to read hymns to each other.

You could sit with the same hymn for weeks on end, turning it slowly, slightly every day listening deeply to what the marriage of tune and text are saying.  

You could go to YouTube and listen to as many different versions as you can find!

In the coming weeks, I will expand in new directions in these morning meditations, but I will always offer you one day when there is a “Hymn of the Week”.  This hymn will shine and share a light on the reflections and keep grounding us in this prayer practice of holding our hymnals with open hearts.

I pray you continue to let the One who is still singing in our lives and causes our lives to flow on in endless song to accompany you in these days.

Prayer: Praise to the living God, the God of love and light, whose word brought forth the myriad suns and set the worlds in flight.  Whose infinite design, which we but dimly see, pervades all nature, making all a cosmic unity.  Amen.