There are times when worship can be a bit of a worry.

Here is one example that came to mind this week, for reasons I’ll explain later. There are two songs ‘out there’ with the same first line: Jesus, lover of my soul.

One, written in 1993, starts like this:
Jesus, lover of my soul; Jesus, I will never let you go.
You’ve taken me from the miry clay;
You’ve set my feet upon the rock
And now I know, I love you. I need you.
Though my world may fall, I’ll never let you go.

The other, written 250 years earlier, in 1740, starts like this:
Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high;
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide; till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide, O receive my soul at last!


What do you see that is similar, beyond the first line? The theme of love? Yes. The imagery? Yes, with ‘miry clay … rock’ in the 1993 song and ‘waters … tempest … storm’ in the 1740 one. In fact, there are enough similarities to suggest that the later one was inspired by the earlier one. That is an excellent impulse for contemporary song-writers, a bit like Eugene Petersen did with The Message.

What do you see that is different? The language is harder in the 1740 one, as you’d expect. But with a generation that is accustomed to The Lord of the Rings that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. As children, Jesus having a bosom to which we fly was always the guarantee of a giggle, often persisting until the benediction, by which time a scowling parental coercion had restored our composure.

But there is a more significant difference to be noticed. The 1740 song focuses on the the love of Jesus for me, as you’d expect with an opening phrase like ‘lover of my soul’, whereas the 1993 lyric takes a 180-degree turn and creates a song about my love for Jesus. Do you see that? This has puzzled me for years. Although ‘lover of my soul’ could possibly refer to ‘my love for Jesus’ as well, I remain unconvinced that it is the natural sense of the phrase in the context of this hymn. Others may disagree.

Furthermore, “Jesus, I’ll never let you go” is a phrase that has problems. [NB: Let me add that plenty of the ancient songs face this same problem!]. One is that it is unlikely to be true because we human beings are too feeble and too fragile to make a claim about never letting go of Jesus. However sometimes our singing is about impossible longings and aspirations, like this one. I accept that, although “though my world may fall, I’ll never let you go” is one step too far. A second problem raises the matter of why we would want to sing about not letting go of Jesus with such boldness, when the first line sets us up to sing about a far more worthy reality – namely, Jesus not letting go of us? A third problem is the tone that is conveyed. There is a restlessness, a striving – a tug-of-war comes to mind – in any effort we make not to let go of Jesus. The truth is that Jesus not letting go of us breathes such a restfulness and an assurance into our lives. That is what we need. A final problem is that while the 1993 song does affirm things that Jesus does, overall, an anthropocentric lyric is eclipsing a christocentric lyric and that is risky, very risky. We’ve always learned our theology from our songs and that is faulty theology.

I came across the older “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” again because Barby and I have been watching the Netflix series, The Crown. In that series there is an episode, Aberfan, a coal-mining town in South Wales where a landslide submerged a primary school in the 1960s and killed dozens of little children. In the episode we see people standing two and three deep at the cemetery singing “Jesus, Lover of My Soul”. But put The Crown to one side and check out this 199-second news report from one week after the tragedy. The reality was very different.

Don’t get me wrong. It is not wrong to sing about our love for Jesus. Of course not. It is a natural response to sing about the object of our affection. But let’s take care to ensure that our love-songs aren’t merely spring and summer songs, demonstrating that life is sweet. Because when autumn and winter hover, when tragedy and crisis overwhelms and life turns sour, there is only one love about which to sing, the love from Jesus that never lets us go.

Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high;
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide; till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide, O receive my soul at last!


Thou, O Christ, art all I want; More than all in thee I find;
Raise the fallen, cheer the faint, heal the sick and lead the blind.
Just and holy is thy name, I am all unrighteousness;
Vile and full of sin I am, thou art full of truth and grace.


Other refuge have I none; hangs my helpless soul on thee;
Leave, ah! leave me not alone, still support and comfort me.
All my trust on thee is stayed, all my help from thee I bring;
Cover my defenseless head with the shadow of thy wing.


Plenteous grace with thee is found, grace to cover all my sin;
Let the healing streams abound, make and keep me pure within.
Thou of life the fountain art; freely let me take of thee;
Spring thou up within my heart, rise to all eternity.

With my Lyrics for Living series on this blog, the idea is to find a youtube link that adds a contemporary touch to the ancient song (oftentimes a change in tune is needed as well!). On this occasion, with the Covid-19 crisis still to reach its peak in India, I was delighted to discover a group of Indian men singing this hymn.

nice chatting

Paul