I Hate That Hymn

By Steve Schlossberg The only thing complained about in church more often than the lousy sermon is the lousy music. Bad preaching we learn to begrudgingly tolerate because we find ourselves without alternati... Read More...

Finding Hope in My Father’s World

By Mark Michael We sang “This is My Father’s World” at least once every year in the church of my childhood, on the Sunday of the church picnic at the town park. This was about the only hymn we knew that mentioned the natural world: “of rocks and trees, of s... Read More...

Christ the Lily of Humanity

By Mark Clavier There’s an old tradition of finding Easter in nature. This can be seen especially in Christian poetry, perhaps most famously in Venantius Honorius Fortunatus’ 6th-century Easter hymn, “Hail T... Read More...

Of Hymns and Missionaries

By Daniel Martins One of the spiritual practices in which I regularly engage is to sit down at a piano or organ keyboard with a hymnal and just play through hymns, allowing myself ample opportunity to reflec... Read More...

The double cure

Toplady's “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me” qualifies as one of the richest hymns, with its biblical allusions, soteriological vision, and complex history.