Old and New

Many things are old and new again.  Styles come and go and come around again.  Great athletes who have supposedly become “has beens” return on a new team and astound everyone.  A senior citizen becomes a media darling and a cult hero to the young with a simple one liner, “Where’s the beef?”  Solomon said that there is nothing new under the sun.  It is just a new set of eyes that see it and embrace it before it resurrects in the next generation.  There is a famous hymn that has had this life experience of its own.

Originally written during the revival era, traveling worldwide and translated into many languages and then passing into relative obscurity, it was resurrected by an evangelist in what is considered the post revivalist era.  The hymn is “How Great Thou Art”.  It began as a poem written in Swedish and had no music.  Several years later it was set to the tune of a Swedish folk song.  From there it traveled down to Germany and was translated into German then on to Russia where it was translated into Russian.  An English missionary heard it there, rephrased and added new words and altered the music.  From England it moved to India, part of the vast English Empire where it was heard by an American evangelist and taken to the United States in the early 1950’s.  Used at a Bible training seminar in America and then made its way back to London where it was shown to the Billy Graham Crusade staff. The Graham Crusades made it popular again all over the world beginning in the 1950’s, which happens to be just after the end of the revivalist era.  The old was new.

Billy Graham said, “The reason I like “How Great Thou Art” is because it glorifies God. It turns Christian’s eyes toward God, rather than upon themselves.”  Lawrence Welk said it was the most requested song ever on his television show.  By the mid 1970’s it had been performed over one million times!  As we wrap up our devotions on creation this week, let us sing a much beloved song and worship the Great Creator who inspired it. 

O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder consider all the works Thy hand hath made. I see the stars I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Refrain:

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee; How great Thou art, how great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee: How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

http://www.mannamusicinc.com/hgta.htm

  The Friday Benediction

Until Monday, my friends, may the good God envelop you with His grace; may you prove the common confession of faith, “I believe in the holy Christian church and in the fellowship of the saints”, and may you be enriched with joy and hope as you exercise that confession this weekend.  Amen

 

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