I thought maybe you'd appreciate the ugliness - I thought it would contrast the beauty of our words. Or something.


I really love reading and playing hymns.

I received a hymnal this past weekend. I've been wanting one for quite a while, but have never done anything about it. And, though this one doesn't have my two favorite hymns - Be Thou My Vision and I Wonder As I Wander - it's still a hymnal. It's older, and has a lot of songs I've never heard of, and quite a few different arrangements of familliar songs as well(all of which, I've liked so far).

I was just playing through it a little bit, but I stopped and began to simply read through some of them. I can read words much more fluently than I can read music, and the former seemed the only way to do justice to these pieces.

Here's one that caught my eye:

Hymn 493 - I Think When I Read That Sweet Story
Greek Folk Song
Jemima T. Luke

I think when I read that sweet story of old,
When Jesus was here among men,
How he called little children as lambs to his fold,
I should like to have been with him then.

I wish that his hands had been placed on my head,
That his arms had been thrown around me,
And that I might have seen his kind look when He said,
"Let the little ones come unto me."

Yet still to His footstool in prayer I may go,
And ask for a share in His love;
And if I thus earnestly seek him below,
I shall see Him and hear Him above.


The one I had read before it was "Hushed Was the Evening Hymn" and the line that stuck out to me was:
"O give me Samuel's mind: A sweet, unmurmuring faith,
Obedient and resigned To Thee in life and death!
That I may read with child-like eyes Truths that are hidden from the wise."


And as I was reading those, I was thinking about something I memorized in Matthew. A few things, actually. Chapter 18 and a few verses in 19, but inparticular Chapter 11:25-26: "At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure."

I just thought I'd share.

ah.

-becca