Your Life in Six Hymns

Another Way for week of October 20, 2023

Your Life in Six Hymns

Hymns are what carry our faith forward, because we remember words of hymns many many years after we have heard a sermon. Too often we’ve forgotten the sermon, even the main point, in one hour.

Someone posted a request online for people to share “Your Life in Five Hymns.” I decided to write about it, but couldn’t narrow down my list to five. My favorites include songs from very old, to more modern, and from other cultures. “Masithi Amen” is probably my favorite among those in the South African tribal language “Khosa.” This short and sweet song is easy to sing, even using the Khosa language which basically tells us to “Sing amen, amen, we praise your name O God,” repeated numerous times.

Why does music reach our hearts and inner emotions? Both the words and the tunes grab us and carry us through bad and difficult times and good. Funeral hymns are another category that have much emotion for many of us. And I don’t mind when hymnals use old archaic language, or if they switch to modern interpretations some people like better.

One family memory which is still powerful was my mother and sister singing duets at Hope Rescue Mission, a ministry in a larger city where persons (mainly men) went for a meal, a safe night’s sleep, and breakfast. What they also received was a sermon and music by whatever church group happened to be visiting that night. The song I remember was “The Love of God” and continued with the message, “is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell; …It shall forevermore endure—the saints’ and angels’ song.” I think that song resonated in my mind because my mother and sister harmonized so beautifully as soprano and alto. And the younger me was slightly jealous I couldn’t sing alto yet.

Speaking of children, I cannot even think about this song without tears welling. It means so much. The triple punch comes in verse three of “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need,” which starts this way: “The sure provisions of my God, attend me all my days … no more a stranger, or a guest, but like a child at home.” The text was by great hymn writer Isaac Watts in the early 1700s.   

Another hymn that has enriched baptismal services in many churches is a Lutheran baptismal hymn “I was there to hear your borning cry, I’ll be there when you are old. I rejoiced the day you were baptized, to see your life unfold.” John Ylvisaker wrote the text in 1985, and literally turned one piece around when encouraged to “personalize” what he had written earlier. So we get God singing the words of the hymn to us, “I was there to hear your borning cry.” Yes, borning is a newish word, but I like it.

A song of thanksgiving is always a lift, and for that I’ll nominate “I Thank Thee Lord.” Adelaide A. Procter wrote many hymns including this favorite, which continues, “that Thou hast kept the best in store; we have enough, yet not too much, to long for more.” Adelaide was born in the early 1800s in London: I marvel at how contemporary her words are for us today.

Finally, I’ll end this reverie of hymns with an old old favorite, “Blest be the tie that binds … the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.” It goes on to talk about the mutual woes and burdens we bear. John Fawcett wrote that one in the late 1700s, about the time the U.S. was forming.

My church background spans Mennonite, Presbyterian and Lutheran (married a Lutheran and we compromised by joining a Presbyterian church when our first baby came along). The hymns and music I love are rich in family memories, but I could include one hundred more beloved hymns if I had the room here! (These short quips should not encroach copyright issues.)

What top hymns do you love?

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Another Way is a column by Melodie Davis, in syndication since 1987. She is the author of ten books, most recently Memoir of an Unimagined Career. Another Way columns are posted at FindingHarmonyBlog.com a week after newspaper publication.