If they had written for their community, we could write for ours. We let that permission carry us, and we wrote a melody we believed could find its way into the heart of the modern Church, just as theirs had found its way into the Church of their day.
Nearly 1,800 years apart. The same instinct. The same desire. To give the Church a song it could actually sing.
[ WM ] What did you learn about worship through this whole experience?
[ Ben ] There is something that quietly convicts me about these ancient hymn writers. They were not singing from a place of comfort or clarity. The Church around them was fracturing from within. Outside its walls, persecution was closing in. By every measure of human circumstance, despair would have been the reasonable response. Silence would have been an understandable one. And yet they sang.
They lifted their voices to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to the“ only giver of all good gifts”, not because their lives reflected it in that moment, but because they had chosen to worship God for who He is, not for who their circumstances were telling them He might be.
We are so prone, I am so prone, to letting the weather of our lives determine the posture of our worship. To praising when it’ s easy and going quiet when it isn’ t. These men and women had every excuse to go quiet. They didn’ t. And their defiant song has travelled nearly 1,800 years through history to reach us.
It makes me want to lift my eyes. To push beyond my own limited, circumstantial view of God and ask Him to show me something higher and truer than what I can see from where I’ m standing.
When you read the lyrics of this ancient hymn, you can sing them. Right now. As a modern believer, the words land in your mouth like they were written yesterday. In a sense, they were written for every generation of the Church that would follow. Our worship has always been grounded in Scripture, but it has also been carried through time in song, a theology sung, tried and tested, and handed down through century after century of faithful voices. One generation to the next.
This hymn was always part of that great tradition. It makes me wonder about all of the other great hymns over the centuries that have been forgotten and buried. How glorious the day when we will all sing from heaven’ s hymn book.
[ WM ] That’ s amazing. What do you hope those who watch this First Hymn documentary will walk away with after viewing it?
[ Ben ] There is a beautiful irony at the heart of this entire story. The God of this ancient hymn exalts … the trinitarian God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is known for reaching into the places where hope has expired.
[ WM ] Ben, thank you so much for your thoughtful answers and time here.
[ Ben ] You’ re quite welcome.
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