God be with you till we meet again12/16/2023 ![]() Smite death’s threat’ning wave before you.Īnalytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. I still value you all, and this is my prayer for you: I invite you to continue to contact me, if you wish ( I especially invite you to read my blog, “Reformed Revelry” ( ), which I am resurrecting and will update weekly. ![]() I’ve relished writing my columns and have much enjoyed getting email, letters and sometimes even phone calls from readers. I feel a widening gap between CC’s approach to many issues and my own so I think it’s time to move on. I became the full-time associate editor, then editor for a bit, then (in the Harry der Nederlanden era) came back as a freelance news editor and columnist, and have remained writing columns until now. I began my association with the paper in 1984 when Bert Witvoet gave me a part-time job as a film reviewer, then as an editorial assistant. I’m thinking of this hymn now because this 154th column will be the last I write for Christian Courier. Most modern hymnals (including the Psalter Hymnal and Lift Up Your Hearts) use only four, and the Vaughan Williams tune dispenses with the refrain. Often the reasons are based on hymnal editors’ worldviews and specific theological traditions. Hymns may go through textual changes as well. Thus, the current CRC/RCA hymnal, Lift Up Your Hearts, contains both tunes (#s 943, 944). While Vaughn Williams’ simple tune is hauntingly beautiful, many people missed the old tune, and said so: it holds deep memories and significance for them, no doubt because of the parting occasions, including funerals, at which the hymn is sung. When the gray 1987 Psalter Hymnal came along, Rankin’s text was set, instead, to a lovely, far better constructed tune (RANDOLPH) by Britain’s best 20th century composer, Ralph Vaughn Williams (PH # 316). ![]() That’s the tune most people will recognize. ![]() (He wrote 225 hymn texts this is the only one surviving in modern hymnals.) The tune I grew up with (GOD BE WITH YOU, by William Tomer), was paired with Rankin’s text not long after he wrote it. ![]() There’s a 19th century hymn that Christian Reformed Church members grew up singing in successive Psalter Hymnals on occasions of parting: “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.” The 1880 text is by Jeremiah Rankin, a New England Congregational minister. The music deeply etches those texts into our minds and hearts, eliciting everything from ecstatic hallelujahs to repentant or grief-tinged tears. While many of us know Bible verses and passages by heart (I do, thanks to years of good training at home, Sunday school and Christian schools), I suspect that even more of us can recite the words to dozens of hymns, psalms and/or contemporary Christian songs. That being the case, we need to take care that what we sing in worship proclaims the truth and – taken together – the whole counsel of God. Instead, it acknowledges the power of music (especially with biblically based texts) to seep into our souls, psyches and memory. That is not to denigrate the Spirit-led, spirit-affecting power of Word-based preaching. There is a truism that I’ve previously noted about the music we use in worship: we learn more theology from what we sing in church than from the sermons we hear. ![]()
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