A New and Growing Love

My heart is swelling with thankfulness and chills are going up my spine all because of something that came in the mail today. My sweet blogging friend September recently did a giveaway on her blog, and of all the awesome things she was giving away, I somehow won the most perfectly wonderful one of them--Selah's latest CD, You Deliver Me!

I love Selah's music. In fact, a couple of the songs we used in our wedding--including the one I walked down the aisle to--were by Selah. Not only is their music beautiful, but unlike much of today's contemporary Christian music, it is also lyrically rich. Their You Deliver Me album (which I am listening to rather loudly as I write this :-)) is no different. The songs are so beautiful... so meaningful... and I am so thankful, September!

Selah has recorded some great hymns for their past albums, and I was excited to see that there are more of them on this newest one. Perhaps I am an exception amongst those of my generation, but I seem to have a new and growing love for Christian hymns. A couple months ago our church's worship pastor introduced a hymn that I don't believe we had sung in church before. With great enthusiasm and passion he told the story behind the hymn before leading the congregation in the singing of the most moving and meaningful of lyrics--far more moving to me than most of the contemporary worship songs we hear and sing today.

The day after that church service, I read this blog post by Roger E. Olson, a professor of Theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University. In it, he expounds upon his belief that "the cessation of singing hymns and gospel songs has greatly contributed to the general ignorance of doctrine and biblical images and symbols among evangelicals who grew up in the 1980s and since." He then urges music ministers and worship leaders to "re-introduce hymn singing in churches, leading them with passion and enthusiasm and commenting on the words so that people will awaken to their meanings." This was just what our worship pastor had done, and it certainly did awaken this born-in-1983 girl to the meaning of the song's words.

Indeed, my heart is thankful--not only for the gift of a really good CD, but also for the gift of music with which we are able to take God's Word and to sing it back to Him in songs of worship, praise, and adoration. What a blessing....

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