THE OLD SONGS? WHAT HAPPENED?

When something works, don’t try to fix it or replace it.  Keep at it, and look for ways to fine tune it, improve it, and rise to new heights.  This is a truism for many things, but I want to focus on the hymns and songs that resonate with hearts of the faithful, or used to anyway.

As Christians we’ve been singing our theology for two millenia as God’s grace invites our response.  His lavish love inspires our obedient faith.  God’s call to holiness invites us into intimacy with him.  Ours is a full salvation from the uttermost of our sin to the uttermost of Christ’s perfecting work shaping us into his likeness, holiness.  We sing about God's initiatives and provisions.  Song is a celebration of our personal journeys in our alienation from God through redemption and reconciliation to our restoration, purity of heart and life, and ever increasing intimacy with God.  Our songs and hymns carry the good news of the Gospel.  The Good News does not end with our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection, but goes forward with God’s remarkable gift of himself, the Holy Spirit, who is by faith available to us today.

The contributors to our hymns and songs of faith are many over the years, but  

no one helps us sing our theology more than Charles Wesley.  He wrote over 6,000 hymns in his lifetime.  Among them are such well-known classics as And Can It Be, Christ the Lord Is Risen Today, Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, Love Divine All Love Excelling, O for a Heart to Praise My God, O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing, and Soldiers of Christ, Arise.

What happened to the old songs and hymns?  They’ve all but disappeared. The challenge we face today is that we rarely sing the old hymns.  We’ve begun to forget the words.  We lose a key means of learning our classic Christianity while  the new songs rarely communicate the theology very well.  Believers under 40, perhaps and some under 50, don’t know the old hymns and songs and are especially at a disadvantage.  While hymns are no substitute for knowing Scripture, the classic old hymns help interpret the Word in ways that move our hearts and mind like no other.  My hope and prayer is that we will rediscover the hymns of our heritage and pass them on to the next generation.  I also pray that God will raise up some new Charles Wesleys whose grasp of the Word make possible new songs and hymns for our sake and God’s glory!