Welcome to "Tuesday Morning"—always a good way to begin a day, and especially so for Christians.

 

The weather this week in the Southwest has begun cold and blustery. Forecasters in Boston call these weather patterns "raw." I wonder what weather people in Anchorage, Alaska call this weather. Summer?

 

Whatever the weather is where you are today, Palm Sunday is less than two weeks away. Seventeen days to Good Friday. Easter right after that. If you are planning to run in the Boston Marathon on April 21, you should already be in serious training for the event.

 

But Good Friday is on my mind today. The day that the bad guys tried to eliminate the Good Guy. Things looked grim for Jesus and his followers. Betrayal, an arrest, false witnesses, perjured testimony, trials, Pilate, floggings, Golgotha, three crosses, crucifixion, a tomb. Sunday was coming, but not quite yet. The Cross was central then. The Cross is still central today. Saint Paul would later write about it, "God forbid that I should boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Galatians 6:14, NEB). Isaac Watts must have had Paul's words in mind when he wrote,

 

"Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,

Save in the death of Christ, my God;

All the vain things that charm me most

I sacrifice them to His blood."

 

Join me at the Cross. You already know the outcome. EASTER. Hallelujah! But something must be done first. God's Plan was still a work in progress. Sin had to be dealt with. Everyone's sin. From Adam's to yours and mine. John 3:16 had not yet been written. But a generation later it would become the single most important verse in the Gospels. "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever would believe in Him would not perish but would have eternal life." This week's epistle is entitled, "Simple Tunes." Continue reading, and be prepared to sing the entire hymn, but especially the fourth stanza. It can be your testimony, if you believe.

 

"Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all."

 

If God is doing a new work in your heart and life today, hit the "reply" key and tell me about it.

 

Tom Barnard

A Fellow Traveler to the Cross

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Simple Tunes

Tom Barnard

 

wo of the best-loved songs in Christendom—Amazing Grace and When I Survey the Wondrous Cross—use only five notes each in their melodic lines. Their tunes are simple, but their texts are glorious. As we approach Easter, both songs will be sung and played around the world, wherever Christians gather this month. Both of these songs have been sung thousands of times at Billy Graham Crusades—starting with Graham’s first crusade in Los Angeles, California, in 1949.

 

The best-known hymn-tune using the When I Survey text is known as “Hamburg” and was written in 1824 by Lowell Mason of Savannah, Georgia. Church musicians will recognize that it was based on an ancient Gregorian scale.

 

But the hymn-tune doesn’t reach the level of majesty of the text. The words came from Isaac Watts, one of the most important names in the history of English hymnody. Born into the home of a British merchant in 1674, Watts was a bright child. He started to study Latin at the age of four and added Greek when he was nine. At eleven he took on French and at thirteen began to study Hebrew. However, it was not for his gift of languages that Watts is remembered. He is remembered for his poetry and the hymns that came into use because of that gift. Some have called him “the father of English Hymnody.”

 

Watts eventually became a Congregational minister and wrote more than six hundred hymns, including When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.

 

Tedd Smith, one of the pianists with the Graham Crusades, said about this hymn, 

 

"It seems to me that Isaac Watts wrote this text as if he were standing at the foot of Christ’s cross, together with the disciple John, the faithful women, Jesus’ mother, the Roman soldiers and the excited mob. When I play or sing the hymn, I try to make Watts’ ideas and words my own. With him, I cannot help but marvel at the incredulity of the scene—the “Prince of heaven” nailed to a tree by sinful men. Jesus, dying for me! For it was my sins which He bore on that terrible day."*
 

Join me in reading or singing the four stanzas of this hymn, today and throughout the Lenten season.

 

When I survey the wondrous cross,

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.

 

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,

Save in the death of Christ, my God;

All the vain things that charm me most

I sacrifice them to His blood.

 

See, from His head, His hands, His feet,

Sorrow and love glow mingled down;

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

 

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.

(Isaac Watts, 1707)

 

*(Crusade Hymn Stories, edited by Cliff Barrows, Hope Publishing Co. Chicago, 1967)