Day By Day (the Hymn)

This is what you might call a devotional hymn, in that it is not exult in the majesty of God or weighty doctrine. Yet it carries a message that Christians need to hear in order to live in awe of the majesty of God and to apply doctrine to their lives.

Day by day, and with each passing moment
Strength I find to meet my trials here;
Trusting in my Father's wise bestowment
I've no cause for worry or for fear...

The protection of His child and treasure
Is a charge that on Himself He laid;
"As thy days, thy strength shall be in measure,"
This the pledge to me He made...

Help me then in every tribulation
So to trust Thy promises, O Lord,
That I lose not faith's sweet consolation
Offered me within Thy holy Word...

I must admit: trust is the biggest battle I face in the Christian life. It all comes down to whether I believe the promises, or don't. The day-by-day steps of trust make a big difference to my overall spiritual trajectory. If I'm not believing that God is good, or, more specifically, that He is good to me, that doubt, especially if unperceived, can allow in a lot of other things like worry and strife, and those things ensnare me into sin.

I'm thankful for songs like this one that remind me of simple but profound truths. Not all truth is simple, and not all is profound; there are hymns that treat weighty matters like justification and sanctification which are both complex and profound. My point here is that if I don't have the simple things straight, I'll never be able to bear those weightier realities that provide a more substantive joy.

I was praying about what song to blog about this week and a friend mentioned this one. I've become familiar with it over the past year and now embrace it as part of my spiritual heritage and musical repertoire.

"Day By Day," Words by Caroline V. Sandell-Berg, Music by Oscar Ahnfelt. The lyrics printed here are half of each verse; for the full lyrics and melody, check it out on CyberHymnal.

O Great God

Was thinking about this song this morning, looked up the lyrics and found someone else blogging about this song, too. That's awesome; God works all things together for good, even national distribution of music.

We've been singing "O Great God" at church and it's gotten into my heart. Timmy's got the full lyrics at the link above; one verse in particular I wanted to note.

I was blinded by my sin
Had no ears to hear Your voice
Did not know Your love within
Had no taste for heaven’s joys
Then Your Spirit gave me life
Opened up Your Word to me
Through the gospel of Your Son
Gave me endless hope and peace

I was struck by how each of the first four lines mentions a different sense that was numbed or deadened before His Spirit gave the singer life. It is a confession that we are senseless until the Lord quickens us. I appreciate the artistry that conveyed this truth.

Programmed to Receive

"You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave."

I thought of this line from the Eagles' "Hotel California" in a discussion about church membership. It can be very hard to leave a church by un-joining, but a lot of people check out.

I think "Hotel California" is a nightmare version of a shallow, perverse, sensate culture. There is plenty of room, and you can live it up, but still, when you're in the middle of it, you think, "This could be heaven, or this could be hell." Nothing's quite straight: minds are "Tiffany-twisted," and materialism gives you the "Mercedes bends." No one quite knows what they're doing there, "some dance to remember, others dance to forget."

I think some people join churches this mindset - not quite sure what they're there for, except they think perhaps its a "lovely place." And maybe it is, but maybe that's all it is. The worst thing is, that the church may not quite know what it is there for, except that it is "programmed to receive."

I think "HC" is also about drug addiction, and I'm not meaning to say that churches or membership just feed addictions. I would say, though, that in the world we are all "just prisoners here of our own device." We may look pretty but need a radical salvation. Try as we may, we "just can't kill the beast" - the sin nature within or the Enemy who works against our souls. What does overcome the world is faith; that is what churches should be about, and that's what its members should have.