Music Box Hymns
Eliz Mettert
Before I came to Baylor, my vocabulary had not even included names like Chris Renzema, Hillsong and Elevation Worship. I had never listened to modern worship music, let alone witnessed the full show of hand-raising and guitar-strumming that often accompanied it.
Our faith is an opportunity to transcend this world and get a glimpse of the heavenly banquet that awaits us. But to make use of this opportunity, we must quiet ourselves in peaceful contemplation. We must remember that Christians have been practicing for 2,000 years, and that many traditional hymns are rooted in this rich, longstanding history. We must abandon contemporary frivolities that disrupt sacred celebrations.
There is nothing that will bring a smile quicker to my face than hearing one or more of my children singing a hymn as they play or work. It is a very uplifting to come into a room and hear Anna signing While by the Sheep, to watch Benaiah swing his sword while singing All Hail the Power of Jesus Name, or Ruth doing dishes singing Psalm 1.
Pin
To say I enjoy singing in our Morning Time would be an understatement. I am absolutely passionate about teaching my children the great music of our faith. Morning Time is the perfect place to do this; we always begin our day with a Psalm, hymn, or spiritual song.
Hymns speak doctrinal truths into our hearts. When we sing Come, Thou Almighty King the doctrine of the trinity is expressed in elegant, but very simple words. Each verse gives us something to remember about the three persons of the trinity.
Hymns and many of the Psalms in the Psalter are easy to sing. For the most part, the repeating melodies of hymns are very easy to pick up. By the time you have sung two or three verses of a new hymn, you are ready to tackle the fourth. Musically they do not jump around, keeping you guessing at the next note, but flow in easy-to-remember stanzas.
Below is one of our favorite hymns to sing before bed. It is a lovely lullaby type prayer. However, it is most likely unfamiliar to most of you. Listen to the first verse, try to sing the second. See, easy!
When we start with a hymn, I am energized through the singing of a familiar tune. I am more prepared for the other components of our family worship.
Hymns are fun to sing! Yes, you read that right. Hymns are fun to sing. There are slow tunes, fast tunes, minor and major keys; a vast diversity of music that my children go crazy for!
When we start with a hymn my children will have in their heads and hearts the vast resource that psalms and hymns provide them. A means to praise, a means to pray, a means to acknowledge and remember who God is and what he has done.
Choose hymns that have refrains. Non-readers will love that they can almost immediately join you in song because every verse ends the same. Hymns like Trust and Obey, Christ the Lord is Risen Today, or Jesus Keep Me near the Cross.
Have a plan to learn and review hymns. We learn one new hymn a month. At the beginning of the school year I choose one hymn per month and print them all out on a sheet. Below our new hymn I add review hymns from previous years. So, for August, we have one new one and those we learned in Augusts past. Each morning we will sing the new hymn and one of the old ones.
This method gives us a good review of our favorite hymns. The children also get to choose hymns for singing at night as we prepare for bed. They often choose ones we have recently learned, keeping previous months hymns fresh as well.
Add fun scripture memory or catechism songs. When you have well established hymn singing in your Morning Time, you may want to add some fun scripture memory or catechism songs to your repertoire.
To get you started we have made Hymn Cards for you that are easy for little hands to hold. Print them out on cardstock, laminate if desired, and secure them with a jump ring. With one copy for each Morning Time participant, you are ready to begin adding hymns to your Morning Time!
There is a powerful, present-day relevance in this song. Many things in the world threaten to rob us of our peace, such as COVID-19, racial tensions, political strife, and increasingly pronounced divisions.
I was careful not to overwrite this arrangement. Very little was given to the band outside a basic structural sketch. I asked Kris to play soprano sax and I gave him no fixed, written lines to play. I wanted to evoke the the loose, improvised, angst-tinged vibe of the John Coltrane Quartet.
The hymnist poetically expresses the joy, comfort and blessing he experiences in the act of private prayer. In my musical arrangement I sought to capture a correspondingly gentle, magical, intimate atmosphere.
Holiness, as I understand it, is what separates God from all other beings. The term encompasses qualities like omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence, along with His exceptionality and faultless nature. I wanted my rendition to convey majesty, reverence, glory and awe. After starting out in a traditional hymn-like manner, a light bossa nova feel was introduced to heighten the expressiveness and create a more expansive, worshipful environment.
A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification.[1] The word hymn derives from Greek ὕμνος (hymnos), which means "a song of praise".[2] A writer of hymns is known as a hymnist. The singing or composition of hymns is called hymnody. Collections of hymns are known as hymnals or hymn books. Hymns may or may not include instrumental accompaniment. Polyhymnia is the Greco/Roman goddess of hymns.[3]
Although most familiar to speakers of English in the context of Christianity, hymns are also a fixture of other world religions, especially on the Indian subcontinent (stotras).[4] Hymns also survive from antiquity, especially from Egyptian and Greek cultures. Some of the oldest surviving examples of notated music are hymns with Greek texts.[5]
The Western tradition of hymnody begins with the Homeric Hymns, a collection of ancient Greek hymns, the oldest of which were written in the 7th century BC, praising deities of the ancient Greek religions.[12] Surviving from the 3rd century BC is a collection of six literary hymns (Ὕμνοι) by the Alexandrian poet Callimachus.[13] The Orphic hymns are a collection of 87 short poems in Greek religion.[14]
Originally modelled on the Book of Psalms and other poetic passages (commonly referred to as "canticles") in the Scriptures, Christian hymns are generally directed as praise to the Christian God. Many refer to Jesus Christ either directly or indirectly.
In the New Testament, Saint Paul wrote to the Ephesian and Colossian churches, enjoining the singing of psalms and hymns for "mutual encouragement and edification."[16] This was demonstrated when he joined Silas in singing hymns in the Phillipian jail, even during unfortunate circumstances.[16] Psalms 30:4 and Revelation 14:3, among other Scriptural verses, encourage Christians to sing hymns to praise God.[16] As such, since the earliest times, Christians have sung "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs", both in private devotions and in corporate worship.[17][18] Non-scriptural hymns (i.e. not psalms or canticles) from the Early Church still sung today include 'Phos Hilaron', 'Sub tuum praesidium', and 'Te Deum'.[19][20][21]
One definition of a hymn is "...a lyric poem, reverently and devotionally conceived, which is designed to be sung and which expresses the worshipper's attitude toward God or God's purposes in human life. It should be simple and metrical in form, genuinely emotional, poetic and literary in style, spiritual in quality, and in its ideas so direct and so immediately apparent as to unify a congregation while singing it."[22]
Christian hymns are often written with special or seasonal themes and these are used on holy days such as Christmas, Easter and the Feast of All Saints, or during particular seasons such as Advent and Lent. Others are used to encourage reverence for the Bible or to celebrate Christian practices such as the eucharist or baptism. Some hymns praise or address individual saints, particularly the Blessed Virgin Mary; such hymns are particularly prevalent in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and to some extent High Church Anglicanism.[citation needed]
A writer of hymns is known as a hymnodist, and the practice of singing hymns is called hymnody; the same word is used for the collectivity of hymns belonging to a particular denomination or period (e.g. "nineteenth century Methodist hymnody" would mean the body of hymns written and/or used by Methodists in the 19th century).[23] A collection of hymns is called a hymnal, hymn book or hymnary. These may or may not include music; among the hymnals without printed music, some include names of hymn tunes suggested for use with each text, in case readers already know the tunes or would like to find them elsewhere. A student of hymnody is called a hymnologist, and the scholarly study of hymns, hymnists and hymnody is hymnology. The music to which a hymn may be sung is a hymn tune.[24]
In many Evangelical churches, traditional songs are classified as hymns while more contemporary worship songs are not considered hymns. The reason for this distinction is unclear, but according to some it is due to the radical shift of style and devotional thinking that began with the Jesus movement and Jesus music. In recent years, Christian traditional hymns have seen a revival in some churches, usually more Reformed or Calvinistic in nature, as modern hymn writers such as Keith & Kristyn Getty[25] and Sovereign Grace Music have reset old lyrics to new melodies, revised old hymns and republished them, or simply written a song in a hymn-like fashion such as "In Christ Alone".[26]
c80f0f1006