I’m a little reluctant to embark on this project – this offering – of mine simply because we’re not supposed to “let our right hand know what our left hand is doing,” and a very large part of me wants to keep this just between me and Jesus.  But I love Truth and Beauty, and if Truth and Beauty aren’t shared they wither and lose, I think, a measure of their potency.  

Even though I wasn’t raised on these hymns I married a woman who was.  She will very often hear the opening of one and then finish singing it from memory (I love that!).  I’ve come to know many of them over the years, and I’ve learned to treasure them as a great gift to the Church.  Unfortunately, that gift today is not so much devalued as it is neglected or simply passed by like roadside wildflowers – and the best we can hope for is to catch something of a beautiful blur as we speed by.

So I want to share these hymn “translations” because I love Truth and Beauty and because one of my gifts is words.  I seldom come across something beautifully written that I don’t want to find a way to share with others, that I don’t want to make more accessible.  I hold onto many things more tightly than I should, but I find great joy in sharing truth, insight, and beauty whenever I stumble across them.

And that’s why I’m not going to keep all this a secret between just me and Jesus.  I want as many people as possible to see what I’ve seen, to hear what I’ve heard, and to know the joy of having these timeless seeds of Beauty and Truth planted in their souls – because you never know what sort of beautiful flowers may grow from those seeds!

As I said a moment ago, this project is an offering, a free, voluntary offering of thanksgiving inspired by a passage from Psalm 116:

What shall I return to the Lord
for all his bounty to me?
I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice
and call on the name of the Lord.
I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people…. (vv. 12, 17-18)

When I read this psalm recently a desire rose up in me to make a “thanksgiving sacrifice” of my own.  I have known a measure of suffering over the years, but the Lord has always shown Himself faithful (though He doesn’t always show up when and how I’d like).  In the course of our life, God very often makes clear to us what we should do, how we should live, and whom we should love – there’s not much to figure out, He commands and we obey.  But Psalm 116 shows us that there is also a place in every believer’s life for doing something completely and utterly free and uncompelled by God’s command.  There is a place in each of us for freely, willingly, and joyfully saying Thank You to the One who has healed, redeemed, restored, and graciously bestowed upon us new and abundant life in Christ!  (And I want to encourage each of you to find a way to making your own freewill offering, whatever that may look like.)

So I offer these “translations” as my devotional Thank You.  Each and every one will be, in its own way, a celebration of our Father in heaven who loves us so greatly that He sent His Son that we might have life, and then sent His Holy Spirit that we might know His comfort in the midst of our “not-yet” life here under the sun.

As we get started, let me offer a few quick disclaimers.  First, these are hymns, so they’re meant to be sung!  I can’t sing my translations onto the page, but I promise to make them as beautiful as I can.  I have no desire to mow down these gardens of glory and praise into wooden planks of pious platitudes.  I want them to come alive for you so that they can then live in you!

Second, I’ll be giving you words apart from music, and reading lyrics is never as inspiring as entering into song (lyrics and music).  Because of this, the words alone may seem a little dry, like cut garden flowers placed in a vase on the kitchen table – they may offer a burst of color and fragrance to a part of the house that seldom knows them, but they are already doomed to die.  

So then lastly, because these words without their music are like trees without leaves, I plan to give you a link to a performance of each so that once you grasp the meaning of a hymn you can enter into it afresh in worship with great joy.

The first of my translations – “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” – will be posted tomorrow (Thursday).  I haven’t been able to shake it for a couple weeks now, and I think after tomorrow you’ll know why.