A reader suggested this last night, so I saved it for this morning: O Sacred Head Now Wounded, by Johann Sebastian Bach.
This was another one we sang in seventh-grade chorus. Let me see if I can remember the words.
O sacred head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down
Now scornfully surrounded, with thorns thine only crown
O sacred head, what glory! What bliss till now was thine
Yet tho’ despised and gory, I’d joy to call thee mine…
Let’s close out this day with Eternal Father, Strong to Save–not only the hymn of the United States Navy, but of all those, everywhere, who go down to the sea in ships.
I’ve never been to see, but my father was a Navy man. He never spoke of what it was really like to be on a fragile little ammunition supply ship on the vast ocean, with Japanese submarines on the loose. But I loved to look at the pictures he brought home.
The sea is hard, the sea is cruel. No man can tame it. But the sea does have a master: the Lord of Hosts, who created it and established its boundaries, who raises storms and quiets them: who says to the great waters, “Peace, be still.”
Praise Him, praise Him, all that draw breath.
I bought my bike in the first place, a few months ago, because my dentist wouldn’t give me a cleaning on account of my high blood pressure. I didn’t want to go on blood pressure medicine, so I got a bike instead and rode it every day. After a month or so of that, my pressure was jim-dandy.
Today in the doctor’s office the nurse checked my pressure again. “It’s going to be high,” I told her. “I’m at the doctor’s and I’m in pain.” And sure enough, it was very high.
But the doctor wasn’t satisfied. After I thought we were done, she said, “You know what? Let me check your pressure again. I think you might have what we call ‘white coat pressure.’ It goes up whenever you face a medical procedure.” But everything else, she added, appeared to be just fine.
So she checked it again, and it was high again. “You’re a Christian,” she said. “Think of something that makes you happy.”
The first thing that popped into my head was a hymn, Revive Us Again, complete with auto-harp and guitar. (You can find that hymn posted elsewhere on this blog.) And after 30 seconds or so, the doctor said, “Aha! Now it’s going down, just like I thought it would. You don’t have true hypertension. You have white coat high blood pressure.”
Well, that was good news.
If you’ve got a blood pressure monitor handy, you might want to try this at home. Or you could just take my word for it.
Some of you will remember this hymn as the title music for The Vicar of Dibley, an exceptionally raunchy British comedy series.
But this is a lovely hymn, it’s the 23rd Psalm set to music, here performed by the choir of Wells Cathedral.
If this hymn doesn’t stir your soul, I don’t know what will.
I feel the need of a hymn just now.
Here’s one I never heard before. It comes from the Old West, and was first sung to cowboys.
May our Father in Heaven hear us!
We used to sing this in my church, although the lyrics speak of the Holy Grail–a tradition which is not Biblical. But the concluding lines will work:
“Follow, follow, follow the gleam/ of the Light that shall bring the dawn.”
This is a dark age. We need God’s Word as a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.
Sing louder!
I need to rinse my brain out, after that last post, and this old hymn will do it.
All these hymns come back to me from my Sunday school days–and the days of my church, before I went astray. And the church went astray. God has called me back, but my church is still out there making it all up as they go along.
But never mind. I have the tools now to praise God, and you who join in with me. And if that’s not a church, then what is?
Stuart Townsend and the Stoneleight Worship Band with How Deep the Father’s Love for Us, by reader request–and there go the waterworks. I never heard this beautiful hymn before, and it went to my heart.
“My sin upon His shoulders”–this is the core of our faith. This song has its lyrics deeply embedded in the Scriptures. Read ’em and see!
By reader request, here’s Chris Christian with Praise the Lord.
Take heart, take heart from this lyric: “He can work through those who praise Him.” That means us! He can work through us. Don’t ask me how; it’s enough that He knows how.
By reader request, here’s Higher Ground (I’m Pressing on the Way Upward), an old-fashioned gospel hymn–very soothing.
Keep those hymn requests coming, folks. If we ever run out of them, we can always start again.