hymns.

i love hymns. i always have. i used to love singing them in church while i sat with my grandparents growing up. i can distinctly remember their voices as they attempted to sing on key. it's one of my fondest memories of growing up at bluff park. once i began to sing in choirs and understand harmony, i loved trying to sing the other parts, instead of just the melody. when i decided to try my hand at learning piano, i sat down at our piano with the good ol' united methodist hymnal and starting playing. as the years passed and Jesus started to become more real to me, i slowly started to spend a little bit of time dissecting the texts of these hymns as i played them. and today, the more that i read hymn texts from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, i realize that these are the men and women who GOT IT.

in my ever-growing frustration with the state of the american church and our "christian" music, i only have to go back to these songs. these melodies and harmonies. these poems. to be honest, in my times of greatest doubt and unbelief, i come back to many of these hymns to find solace and comfort. i realize that i'm not the only one who's ever felt like that. we still sing the words of these men who felt very similar to or exactly the way i find myself feeling all the time. Jesus is alive, and He is alive in these words. Jesus exists in the words and music of hillsong, charlie hall, derek webb, or whoever else, but when i sing the songs of charles wesley, isaac watts, and william williams, it gives me hope like nothing outside of His word can.

just read this. this is beauty:

i love the windows of thy grace
through which my Lord is seen.
and long to meet my Saviour's face
without a glass between.

oh that the happy hour would come
to change my faith to sight;
i shall behold my Lord at home
in a diviner light.

haste, my Belov'd, and remove
these interposing days.
then shall my passions all be love
and all my pow'rs be praise.

-i. watts