“Beautiful Savior… glory and honor, praise adoration now and forevermore be thine.”

“Beautiful Savior… glory and honor, praise adoration now and forevermore be thine.”

Hymn: “Fairest Lord Jesus”

Text for This Stanza: Joseph August Seiss (1823-1904)

Tune: CRUSADER’S HYMN (ST. ELIZABETH)

If you need to brighten up your day, read that Hymn Line over to yourself several times. What a powerful moment you should have. Although this word-grouping is basically a restatement of Revelation language, for us whose life is inextricably merged with the Beautiful Savior, it speaks for us at a very deep level. If you’re finished reading it over and over, I’ll move on.

While this is powerful even when read, its strength is multiplied when it is sung together in congregation. This is one of those hymns in which my spirit never fails to soar… especially if there’s been a modulating interlude from the organ. Electrifying moments like these are probably why I am such the lover of hymns… and hymn-singing.

I don’t have to ask you what you think I have missed most during the pandemic. You know. I have missed singing with other believers down the pew from me -- hymnals in hand, voices at full-throttle!

My type has been disparaged during these sequestered weeks of being distanced from corporate worship. I’m being told on-line that it is not about the ritual or building. I value the liturgy (participation of the people) in worship; first because it is a biblical mandate, and second because it is therein that I have most-regularly encountered the Godhead throughout my life – usually in a beautifully-appointed worship room.

Tilted back in my recliner while attending two or three streamed services on Sunday morning has been pleasant. We’ve been able to visit far-away churches and enjoy their music, liturgy and sermons. I’ve been told that my living room is a sacred space during these services – I even wrote a well-used hymn about that. But down deep, I want to return to the totally holy place… the building we call a church. I want to resume the ritual. And I want to sing! O how I want to sing!

We won’t be rushing back to the sanctuary of a local church; fortunately, they aren’t rushing back either. But one of these days not too far in the future, I want light to spill through the windows and spread across my hymnal, giving me my cue to sing. We may be six feet from the nearest worshiper, we may be “masked singers,” and things may not be back to normal, but I really hope normal will include offering glory and honor, praise and adoration to the Beautiful Savior – with music.

I plan to weep.

Congregational Hymn (without organ modulation!): https://youtu.be/OWPTPGDeMZw