Growing The Seed May Take Longer Than Thought by Allison Symes

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay images.

My title here may not be seen as good news by any writer.  It is still true though. Why did this thought occur to me?

After a recent service (and I stress it was afterwards!), I was looking through my hymnbook. I’m with the URC. We use Rejoice and Sing. It has so much from the great composers (Bach, Handel, and Vaughan Williams amongst others such as Kendrick and the late Bishop Timothy Dudley-Smith). As for the words, each hymn is a mini address when you read them. 

My favourite hymn, O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go, has my favourite line in it - I trace the rainbow through the rain. That has a lot of resonance for me and I’m sure for many others. It cannot date. Some things are always true. 

My church recently had a Favourite Hymns service where we set a personal best - ten sung hymns, one recited (literally a last minute addition), had the notices, took the offering, there were prayers and readings and we finished two minutes early. I don’t think there is a Guinness Book of Records for this but feel there should be! 

It wasn’t an inconsiderable achievement on our part given we don’t have an organist. We do appreciate Kevin Mayhew Publishers for their No Organist, No Problem material, mind you.

But it was when I looked at the dates, I noticed it was common for there to be a century or more between wonderful words being written and then, later, set to music. 

The original writer left behind them what was effectively a great poem. It became something  even more special when the music composer came along. The original writer could not know this and still wrote what needed to be written. 

Now there’s a challenge. We may not get to see the results of our work but this could be a timing issue. Our words still need to be written. Does that mean we shouldn’t try to get our words out there? No. Far from it. We cannot always know the results, which is something else entirely. 

Can we use our words to encourage, even if we don’t know who the encouragement is for? Oh yes.

I would like to think that was the intention of the original hymn writers before their work was set to music. They could never know in some cases their words would be sung literally centuries later. 

One of our oldest tunes is Old Hundred - best known for its use for All People Than On Earth Do Dwell and Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow. The latter, also called the Doxology, was written in 1674 by Thomas Ken. The tune is thought to have been written by Louis Bourgeois (1551). In this case the music composer couldn’t know what wonderful words would be set to his tune.  

We plant the seed but God makes it grow. This goes for our writing too. His timing is different from ours.