Over the moon…
In all my many very busy Good Fridays as a church musician and worship leader, I never once had a chance to pause and see the pascal moon with my own eyes (and my camera). This evening, by sight and by faith.
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A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee
My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me: I must turn to music. And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life, it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
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A Good Friday Meditation, Part 1: Sorrow and Love Flow Mingled Down
Last Sunday, Palm Sunday, as Christians everywhere entered into the annual act of remembrance that is known as Holy Week, I was singing with the choir at the Old Presbyterian Meeting House in Alexandria, VA. The music was lovely, the choir very, very good, and the sermon meaningful, but what stuck with me through this week of preparation and searching and devotion was the offertory anthem we sang. It was not some famous work or some especially difficult piece -- it was just a Hal Hopson arrangement of that most famous of famous hymn texts by Isaac Watts, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." The words were so familiar,…
Read More
Over the moon…
In all my many very busy Good Fridays as a church musician and worship leader, I never once had a chance to pause and see the pascal moon with my own eyes (and my camera). This evening, by sight and by faith.
Read More
A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee
My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me: I must turn to music. And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life, it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
Read More
A Good Friday Meditation, Part 1: Sorrow and Love Flow Mingled Down
Last Sunday, Palm Sunday, as Christians everywhere entered into the annual act of remembrance that is known as Holy Week, I was singing with the choir at the Old Presbyterian Meeting House in Alexandria, VA. The music was lovely, the choir very, very good, and the sermon meaningful, but what stuck with me through this week of preparation and searching and devotion was the offertory anthem we sang. It was not some famous work or some especially difficult piece -- it was just a Hal Hopson arrangement of that most famous of famous hymn texts by Isaac Watts, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." The words were so familiar,…
Read More
Over the moon…
In all my many very busy Good Fridays as a church musician and worship leader, I never once had a chance to pause and see the pascal moon with my own eyes (and my camera). This evening, by sight and by faith.
Read More
A Good Friday Meditation, Pt. 2: I Crucified Thee
My emotions around the images and stories we link to Good Friday are complicated at best. That is why over and over again, words are not sufficient for me: I must turn to music. And while the Isaac Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," speaks to the complex dance between sorry and love that is our human response to the life of Jesus, in particular the events at the end of his incarnated life, it is Johann Heerman's Herzliebster Jesu ( 1630) that speaks to the incredible guilt we can feel in our human failure to see the living God before us, each and every day. We know Heerman's fifteen…
Read More
A Good Friday Meditation, Part 1: Sorrow and Love Flow Mingled Down
Last Sunday, Palm Sunday, as Christians everywhere entered into the annual act of remembrance that is known as Holy Week, I was singing with the choir at the Old Presbyterian Meeting House in Alexandria, VA. The music was lovely, the choir very, very good, and the sermon meaningful, but what stuck with me through this week of preparation and searching and devotion was the offertory anthem we sang. It was not some famous work or some especially difficult piece -- it was just a Hal Hopson arrangement of that most famous of famous hymn texts by Isaac Watts, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." The words were so familiar,…
Read More