I’ve been feeling a hymn-shaped gap opening up in my spirituality.

No one sings the ones I truly love anymore. I miss their sustaining strength in my life. So, I’ve decided to do something about it. I’ve dug out the old hymnbook from which I selected songs as a pastor. And I am working my way through it, enjoying a singalong with YouTube in the early hours while the world is asleep—much to the relief of all humankind.

Ironically, I found my heart lingering with a hymn I know, but I don’t ever remember selecting.

It’s opening line has found its way into everyday conversation as a byline for “sometimes it’s hard to figure out what God is doing”. On this occasion I thought I’d check out Spotify. 69 recordings of the hymn! Yes, you read that right. I started listening to many of them. In fact, I was determined to be able to write in this blog that I had listened to all of them—but I didn’t make it. Too many of them were either desperately dreary, inaccessibly choral, or fumbled efforts at contemporizing.

Except for two—and so I scurried back to YouTube so that I could listen and watch—and sing along.

Goodness, deary me. Now I can’t stop listening to them…

God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform:
He plants His footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill,
He treasures up His bright designs, and works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; the clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour:
The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan His work in vain;
God is His own Interpreter, and He will make it plain.

The story

With the internet now, it doesn’t take too much effort to track down the stories behind hymns. The writer here, Wiliam Cowper, had a wretched childhood and battled deep depression for much of his life. At one point he was confined to the “St Albans Insane Asylum”—and it was in that horrid-sounding place that God found him and brought him to himself. Later Cowper became close friends with John “Amazing Grace” Netwon and together they collaborated in an intense period of writing hymns—at which point this one was written.

The God

This season of my life, in which I hang-out with so many parts of the global church, has enriched me so much—even more so because the work of Langham Preaching tends to connect me with grassroots believers. As I write these words, as one example, I am thinking of people across South Asia—in countries like Pakistan, India and Myanmar.

Again and again, I’ve been struck by how they seem (a) slower to blame God when things go bad in their lives; and (b) quicker to bless God when things go well.

Why?

It is a question that I’ve asked myself so often.

Although this hymn might not be in their playlist, the God whom it describes is displayed in their lives. They are more comfortable with God’s transcendent qualities. They seem more able to trust God when he is mysterious and unknowable—and not just when he is merciful and attentive. I wonder if that is why they are ‘slower’ and ‘quicker’…

The pictures

I love pictures. In fact, I am in Cairo as I write, and last night I facilitated a session on using illustrations. We struggled to emerge from the stunning Psalms of Ascent, heavily laden as they are with metaphor. Well, this hymn could find a home in their company, as it is laden in a similar way.

God, in his mystery and miracle, planting his footsteps in the sea and riding the storm.

God, in his sovereignty and faithfulness, drawing on treasures from unfathomable mines.

God, in his mercy, turning threatening clouds into ones that monsoon blessings on us.

God, in his providence and grace, taking what looks like a frown, but showing it to be a smile.

God, in his purpose and plans, revealing how the bitter bud can ripen into the sweetest flower.

It is a veritable buffet of transcendence. And yes, I can hear my sophisticated secular setting shouting at me to respond with all the “Buts and Howevers and What Abouts” that come to mind. I hear ya. And yet I also want to hear those grassroots settings, where a deeper, quieter spirituality often has the patience needed to experience the blessing of God’s transcendence.

The chorus

Transcendence can leave God so remote and aloof.

How can such a God be experienced, and even drawn close? This is where art—in this case, poetry and music—helps. But these two recordings do something else as well. They both add a little bit to Cowper’s lyrics, both playing with a chorus and both expressing a personal response. I find that it not only lifts the intensity in the hymn, as I sing along, but it also carries the truths into my heart.

The Crossroads version sings the verse—”Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; the clouds ye so much dread are big with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head“— when it comes up in the hymn, but then it returns to it a couple of times. Kinda like a chorus. Then, right at the end, they slip in their own words of response:

In his own time; in his own way. We trust your time. We trust your way.

Graham Kendrick does something slightly different. He writes his own chorus and inserts it into the hymn, helping us connect with transcendence and find a way to respond to it—and he manages even to slip in an oblique reference to Jesus as well…!

And I will trust the hands that made the starry heavens. And I will trust the wounds of Calvary. And I will trust. And I will not be afraid. For all his ways are love.

The relentless use of the word “and” in this chorus has a way of binding together all these responses to transcendence—and making a home for them in my heart.

The questions

I bet Cowper still had questions for God. I do. I can feel angry with what appears to be his silence and passivity in the face of crisis. People must feel like he has gone on vacation and left the ‘out of office’ message for them. Those questions aren’t going anywhere. They are as real and as raw as ever—but it is just that they can be placed within a different frame, a deeper-higher-wider frame.

Deeper. Like the way it is with the pain expressed in those very same Psalms of Ascent. It is a deep pain, again and again, but deeper still in those psalms, we find God—with qualities like those expressed in this hymn.

Higher. It is like the contrast between Mt Albert, the suburb in Auckland where our family has lived for generations, and Mt Everest, in the Himalayas where my own family grew up. Mt Albert is nothing more than Mound Albert in comparison. And my perspective on life is Albertian high, while God’s perspective is far higher, Everestian high—with qualities like those expressed in this hymn.

Wider. It is to those people of God, wherever they may be found, that it travels—those who are ‘slower to blame’ and ‘quicker to bless’ than I am because they rest their lives patiently in qualities like those expressed in this hymn.

nice chatting

Paul