"Thy name be my theme, and thy love be my song."

Hymn: “I Love Thee” – from Jeremiah Ingall’s Christian Harmony (1805)
Tune: I LOVE THEE

Again we find this pithy hymnline tucked into the second half of the third-and-often-skipped stanza of this sturdy old pre-Civil War hymn. We have no idea who penned these words, but there’s a good bit of honesty woven throughout the hymn.

I keep posting these prayers… fragments of hymn texts that speak directly to God the Creator, the Redeemer, the Spirit. This entire hymn is addressed to Christ; it is ALL a prayer.

This hymnline, though, catches my attention each time it crosses my mind, especially as I sing it aloud in worship. It basically says that I want the nature or character of Christ to be the very theme of my life – the leitmotif, if you please – that recurring theme that is indicative of who Christ is and who I want to be.

Not to wax too music-professor here, but most of us are familiar with the music form called “Theme and Variations.” In that form, a basic theme is stated simply to open the piece; it is usually straight-forward, unencumbered, obvious. After that, the theme is presented in a variety of ways – variations on the first-stated melody.

For us Christian folk, it would be good if we took one of the attributes of Christ – his nature or character – and developed it into everything about our lives. Let’s take the characteristic of “grace” from the arsenal of those things for which Christ stands. If every thought and action were a variation on the theme of grace, our lives would better reflect the main Theme himself.

In THIS hymnline, the unknown writer set out to make “love” the theme of his/her song:

    Thy name be my theme, and thy love be my song;
    Thy grace shall inspire both my heart and my tongue.

May the very essence of who Christ is be the theme of my life, and may love be the song my comrades “hear” through my words and deeds. That’s a prayer worth verbalizing… and living by.