Short muse: hymns

Back from a long and strenuous choir rehearsal for next week's Sacred Music Festival choir. Please do come if you are free on Saturday, the 12th of October, 8pm. The choir and orchestra will perform at the Penang Tunku Abdul Rahman College Auditorium. Tickets cost RM20 each.

Physically exhausted, I am... but strangely, I feel so recharged emotionally, mentally and spiritually from working hard with the rest of the choir on hymns. Doing the "amens" on forte at the finale brought tears to my eyes (even though it's just a rehearsal), because it hit me that we were, as a choir, putting our trust and hope in God... that the words we've sung throughout the whole repertoire of hymns would bring our audience to savour His glory and grace.

Hymns. So oversung (or badly sung - pardon my blunt) in many of our churches that some people just sing them for the sake of liturgy without giving attention to what the words really mean... or they sing it because it gives them a sense of familiarity of the good old days. It is no wonder that the hymns have fallen out of favour with the younger generations. I have nothing against contemporary worship music. (I often use contemporary songs in my worship-leading... drums, bass, acoustic guitar and all.) Nevertheless, hymns are such treasures that it would be a tragic loss if we didn't teach our children (and younger Christians) to appreciate them - the beautiful poetry, their composers, the story behind the compositions, the themes, the parts of Scripture that they point us to so skillfully, the meaningful prayers they encapsulate, the beauty of voicing out those prayers/praises as a congregation, etc. Or worse still, we stop appreciating them ourselves. 

Hymns are not only for those who qualify as our uncles, aunties, daddies, mommies, grandmas, grandpas, etc. Hymns can certainly make a difference in the lives of younger people too.

As for myself, I only grew to appreciate hymns during my time at PMC... thanks to a brother and friend who was so very adamant that I should get to know them. (He was a very compelling teacher of the hymns too!) And indeed, the hymns have enriched my walk with God in many ways. I admit that sometimes, when the tune of a hymn is not my cup of tea (me being me), I read the words out loud instead of singing them like the rest of the congregation, haha. Well, at least there is still some sense of being one with everybody, yes?  

Thought I'd end with the first stanza of a hymn that I found especially meaningful today ~ "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892):

"Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
in purer lives Thy service find,
in deeper rev'rence,
praise."