Sunday's Hymn: Reader's Choice

 
Last week I invited readers to give me a favorite hymn to feature here in the upcoming Sunday’s hymn posts, and today I’m posting the first of the reader’s choice hymns. (If you’d like to see your favorite hymn featured, go here and leave a comment, giving your favorite hymn and a little bit about why you like it.)

This first hymn is a favorite of Kim of The Upward Call and AnnieCOA.

Be Thou My Vision

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

This is an ancient Irish hymn, variously attributed, usually to Dal­lan For­gaill or St. Patrick himself. We really don’t know who wrote it, but we do know that it was translated and versified by two Irish women, Mary Byrne and Eleanor Hull, in the early 1900s. You can see the original Irish lyrics here.

The tune is an Irish folk melody called Slane. You can listen in your choice of instrumental or voice.

Other hymns, worship songs, etc. posted today:

• Earth, Rejoice, our Lord is King at New Lumps
• Conflicting Feelings, a hymn by John Newton at Hiraeth
  
• Stand Up for Jesus at The Happy Wonderer
  
• How Deep the Father’s Love for Us at Above the Clouds
• Hymn 10, L. M., at The Thirsty Theologian.
  
• Come Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove at John Dekker’s Journal
• Fairest Lord Jesus at Seasonings of the Heart
• Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee at joythruChrist
• May the Mind of Christ My Saviour at The Upward Call
  
• The Collect for Whit Sunday (or Pentecost Sunday) at Magic Statistics

Have you posted a hymn this Sunday and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by emailing me at the address in the sidebar and I’ll add your post to the list.

Your Favorite Hymn, Please

 

A couple of years ago, I asked people to tell me their favorite hymn and then those hymns were used as the Sunday’s Hymn until the favorites list ran out, which took several months, as I recall. I’d like to do that again, first of all, because it was a whole lot of fun, and secondly, because it saves me a whole lot of work.

 

In the next few weeks, youngest son will graduating, youngest daughter will be moving out, oldest daughter will be moving in, plus there are all the other more regular year-end activities to attend to, and if I’ve ever needed help keeping the blog going, it’s right now. So help me out here, okay? Tell me one of your loved hymns in the comments to this post, and I’ll feature it in one of my upcoming Sunday’s Hymn posts. While you’re at it, tell me a little bit about why you like the hymn you’ve chosen.

 

If you participated in my previous call for favorite hymns, please participate in this one, too. If you like more than one hymn, give me another of your favorites, but if you are one of those one-hymn wonders (and I know a couple of those in real life) then I will allow you to nominate the same hymn again, although I might add you to my list of most boring people on the face of the earth at the same time.

 

If you have a blog, I’ll link back to you when I feature your hymn. If you don’t have a blog, consider this your chance to get some of the glory of blogging without any of the pain.

Sunday's Hymn: John Newton

I’ve featured John Newton’s hymns here before, but today I’m presenting one more because I want to post a little bit about Olney Hymns, a hymnal published in 1779 that contained hymns written by William Cowper and John Newton. Shortly after Cowper’s conversion, John Newton became his pastor when Cowper moved to live in Olney. They shared a close relationship that continued after John Newton moved from Olney to take over a new pastorate thirteen years later. From John Piper’s book, The Hidden Smile of God:

Newton saw Cowper’s bent to melancholy and reclusiveness and drew him into the ministry of visitation as much as he could. They would take long walks together between homes and talk of God and his purposes for the church. Then, in 1769, Newton got the idea of collaborating with Cowper on a book of hymns to be sung by their church. He thought it would be good for Cowper’s poetic bent to be engaged.¹

As it turned out, Cowper wrote 68 of the hymns included in the Olney Hymns before he suffered another mental breakdown, and Newton finished things off by contributing more than two hundred. The previously featured hymns by Cowper were all Olney Hymns, and so was the ever popular Amazing Grace by Newton.

The breakdown that Cowper suffered was a bad one, and once again he was often suicidal. Newton, Piper writes, “stood by him all the way through this, even sacrificing at least one vacation so as not to leave Cowper alone.”² You get a glimpse there, I’d say, of John Newton’s pastoral heart. When Newton left Olney, he kept in close touch with Cowper, and the two men exchanged frequent letters for the next twenty years.

This hymn by Newton from Olney Hymns is one I was unfamiliar with, but it is in my church’s hymnal. I love it’s cross-centered words.

I Saw One Hanging on a Tree 

I saw One hanging on a tree,
In agony and blood,
Who fixed His languid eyes on me,
As near His cross I stood.

Refrain

O, can it be, upon a tree,
The Savior died for me?
My soul is thrilled, my heart is filled,
To think He died for me!

Sure, never to my latest breath,
Can I forget that look;
It seemed to charge me with His death,
Though not a word He spoke.

My conscience felt and owned the guilt,
And plunged me in despair,
I saw my sins His blood had spilt,
And helped to nail Him there.

A second look He gave, which said,
“I freely all forgive;
This blood is for thy ransom paid;
I die that thou mayst live.”

Thus, while His death my sin displays
In all its blackest hue,
Such is the mystery of grace,
It seals my pardon too.

 
¹ John Piper, The Hidden Smile of God, 96.
² Ibid., 97.

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Other hymns, worship songs, etc. posted today:

• Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross at Fish and Cans
• Not What My Hands Have Done at New Lumps
• Day by Day at The Happy Wonderer
  
• Take the Name of Jesus with You at Above the Clouds
• The Gospel Way, from The Valley of Vision, at The Thirsty Theologian.
  
• From the Depths of Woe I Raise to Thee at John Dekker’s Journal
• Take My Life and Let It Be at Seasonings of the Heart
• Quiet, Lord, my froward heart at joythruChrist
• The Collect for Sunday after Ascension Day at Magic Statistics

Have you posted a hymn this Sunday and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by emailing me at the address in the sidebar, and I’ll add your post to the list.