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Ok, here we go again: part 2 in our Great Hymns series!

Daniel Webster Whittle lived in Massachusetts in the second half of the 19th century. He fought in the civil war, worked for a watch company in Chicago, and worked as an evangelist.

It was after being injured and while in a prisoner of war camp that he first read the New Testament. When he was still not a Christian he was asked to come to a young dying soldier’s bedside to pray with him. Whittle agreed, and recorded this of their encounter:

I dropped on my knees and held the boy’s hand in mine. In a few broken words I confessed my sins and asked Christ to forgive me. I believed right there that He did forgive me. I then prayed earnestly for the boy. He became quiet and pressed my hand as I prayed and pleaded God’s promises. When I arose from my knees, he was dead. A look of peace had come over his troubled face, and I cannot but believe that God who used him to bring me to the Savior, used me to lead him to trust Christ’s precious blood and find pardon. I hope to meet him in heaven.

And he is the writer of the incredible hymn – I Know Whom I’ve Believed

I know not why God’s wondrous grace
To me He hath made known,
Nor why, unworthy, Christ in love
Redeemed me for His own.

Refrain

But I know Whom I have believèd,
And am persuaded that He is able
To keep that which I’ve committed
Unto Him against that day. (2 Timothy 1:12)

I know not how this saving faith
To me He did impart,
Nor how believing in His Word
Wrought peace within my heart.

Refrain

I know not how the Spirit moves,
Convincing us of sin,
Revealing Jesus through the Word,
Creating faith in Him.

Refrain

I know not what of good or ill
May be reserved for me,
Of weary ways or golden days,
Before His face I see.

Refrain

I know not when my Lord may come,
At night or noonday fair,
Nor if I walk the vale with Him,
Or meet Him in the air.

Refrain

Check out this re-setting of the hymn by Stuart Townend (the alterations to the lyrics are his.) Scroll down to the Personal Worship/Say the Word CD set in the link. It’s track 8, re-titled ‘I Know Not Why God’s Wondrous Grace.’)

There’s been a resurgence of interest in hymns recently. Red Mountain Music, Indelible Grace and many others have been resurrecting old or forgotten hymn texts, sometimes resetting or re-harmonizing them, and recording them.

One reason I think these historic hymns have such a deep resonance with us is because they connect us to the historic Church in a personal way. There’s something incredible in the way a 300 year-old text can clearly and beautifully articulate a Christian experience that is identical to our own. It’s a reminder that we are not so different today. That our need for the one who will save us from our sin-nature is just as much a reality now as it has ever been.

So I propose a series over the next months on significant, beautiful hymns of the historic Church. I don’t plan for there to be any great organization to the hymns that get posted. Some will be unfamiliar, some very familiar, some recently made popular. The goal is to celebrate the history of great hymn writing.

You can be a part of this, too. Email me your favorites.

And what makes a hymn significant or beautiful? One that speaks deeply to you.

I’m going to kick it off with one of my favorites. It’s by Samuel Medley, written in the late 1700’s, #386 in Gadsby’s Hymns. At his death, he was reported to say these words: “I am now a shattered bark, just about to gain the blissful harbour, and oh how sweet will be the port after the storm.”

Here it is:

Weary of earth, myself, and sin,
Dear Jesus, set me free,
And to thy glory take me in,
For there I long to be.

Burdened, dejected and oppressed,
Ah! whither shall I flee
But to Thy arms, for peace and rest?
For there I long to be.

Empty, polluted, dark, and vain,
Is all this world to me;
May I the better world obtain;
For there I long to be.

Lord, let a tempest-tossed soul
That peaceful harbour see,
Where waves and billows never roll;
For there I long to be.

Let a poor laborer here below,
When from his toil set free,
To rest and peace eternal go;
For there I long to be.

I discovered the hymn through

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great recording (a modern re-setting of the text.)

I saw the Canadian Opera Company’s premiere of The Nightingale & Other Short Fables a month ago and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It was an evening of whimsical storytelling by director Robert Lepage who pieced together a series of short works by Stravinsky.

I loved the evening.

While clearly the draw was the much talked about conversion of the orchestra pit into an enormous water tank, for me the most intriguing part had the simplest elements. A series of performers created complex hand shadow puppets–the kind you did on the bedroom wall with your reading light when you were a kid. This was one of those rare moments where I sat back in wonder at the sheer inventiveness of what I was watching. The images that were made with hands, arms and a light were funny, and tender–in particular, that of a mother rocking her baby to sleep in a cradle. Truly beautiful. And not something you see often enough at the opera.

I was much impressed with Lepage and the COC’s creative rethinking of the operatic experience.

I recently saw Soulpepper’s production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I really like this play, and there’s something that keeps drawing me back to it since first seeing it 15 years ago.

The play is arguably Albee’s masterpiece – controversial when it was first performed in 1962 for it’s coarse language and frank discussions of sexuality – it has remained both an important and influential work for the theatre. And it’s still shocking almost 50 years later.

But seeing it again I was struck by something I’d never noticed before.

Set in a living room on a Northeastern college campus after a Saturday night faculty soiree, the play walks through the dark hours of after-party drinks with George and Martha, and their guests Nick and Honey.

The two couples are polar opposites. George and Martha are middle-aged, George, a mediocre professor, and a disappointment to both his wife and her father, who happens to be the president of the college. Honey and Nick on the other hand are young, Nick is the brilliant, virile, biology professor whose sights are set on the upper echelons of academia.

Through the course of the evening we watch, along with Nick and Honey, the dissolving of a marriage, a liquor-soaked war of words, an evening of “fun and games” where the hosts play “get the guests,” where they ultimately attempt to one-up each other in a battle for power and control. The guests become George and Martha’s pawns and the evening spirals into chaos.

As the characters drown the evening in alcohol, illusion and reality blur. We learn about George and Martha’s son—the other pawn in their battle, and a shadow that hangs over the entire play.

It’s only in the play’s final moments that we learn their son, in fact, doesn’t exist. They’ve never been able to conceive. Instead they have carefully conceived of and constructed the idea of a ‘son.’ The play’s climax comes when George ‘exorcises’ their son (the third act is titled “The Exorcism”) by ‘killing’ him, at which point the evening dissolves, and the illusions fade. The play ends with Martha and George, two powerhouses of language, alone on stage, barely able to speak, wondering if they’ll be able to go on without ‘him.’

I said that seeing the play struck a different chord in me this time. This was the first time that I understood what this ‘son’ had become to George and Martha. They had fashioned him into an idol. The couple had set him up as one that would satisfy their gaping need to be loved, and when that failed to satisfy them, one that could be used as a weapon against the other in their need for self-justification and power. It’s interesting that when George ‘kills’ their son, when he can no longer be used to satisfy their deepest needs, their language stops. In the last moments of the play they are reduced to a simple exchange of ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ They are left with a gaping hole in their lives. And in one of the few moments of tenderness between the couple, they admit that they are afraid.

I’m struck by the blaring honesty of this scene, by the clear depiction of what happens when we set up idols in our lives—that anything we worship as a functional god besides the one true God will destroy us, and will enable our destructiveness.

Seeing the play from this perspective, I couldn’t help thinking how intensely hopeful the ending is. They are rid of the idol that had rooted itself in their hearts for twenty years and they are at a crossroads, with an opportunity to rightly fill the hole that’s left.

The ending is hopeful only because there is an answer to their hopelessness. There is one who can satisfy them completely. And worshipping him won’t destroy them, but will enliven them.

As with all great art, the play challenges us to confront the reality of our brokenness and to ask if there is an answer and an end to it. As the sun rises the next morning on George and Martha’s house in the small college town and the play ends, I’m thankful that in the Gospel we have that answer.

What is the value of a Christian arts ministry? Should a church even have one? If so, should it serve those inside or outside the church, or both?

I hope this blog will be a place where we can address some of these questions over the coming months, and where we can continue to think more carefully about the role of the arts in the church.

As a starting point, one of the things I hear again and again from artists in the church is the need for a strong Christian arts community. The general consensus is that it would be a place:

• to wrestle through and think about how and where our faith and art intersect
• to support one another in our walk with Jesus and in our work as artists
• to create art together

In thinking through the what of a Christian arts community, I came across an essay by Tim Keller on art and the glory of God that expands more on the why. He says this:

“The Christian artist needs to interact in community because of what he will bring out in others and what they will bring out of him…We need one another because only together do we get some idea of the multifaceted array of God’s glory.”

If artists, as he argues, stimulate the imagination and show the world that things have meaning, and the meaning of life is ultimately the glory (or significance) of God, then artists point people to God’s glory in their work. And if we all point to various aspects of God’s glory through our different work as artists, then we need to work and interact together to help express God’s glory more fully and to point one another (and the world) to His glory.

If individually we are only able to express a ray of God’s glory, then together we are able to show (and see) a much more vibrant picture of God’s glory.

Makes me want to spend more time in community with fellow artists, together reminding one another of the depth and breadth of God’s glory and expressing that to the world.

Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
tell of his salvation from day to day
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous works among all the peoples!
– Psalm 96:2-3