September 20, 2016 (Tuesday)
I was asked, “What is your favorite hymn?”
I answered, “I don’t know. They are all my favorites, I guess.”
I’ve since thought about it a little more. Could it be, “Amazing Grace?” That’s a favorite of people wherever you go, so I would not be alone in my choice. Or, “It Is Well With My Soul?” I believe that is probably a favorite of mine, if I must make a choice. For many years, it was chosen by the student body of Southwestern Seminary as the favorite hymn. Last I heard, it had been replaced with “Victory in Jesus,” also a great song. I always loved, “The Love of God” as a solo, but the question was about my favorite hymn, not a solo. When I was singing solos often, my most requested song was “Ship Ahoy,” and I dearly loved singing it. I learned it by listening to recordings of Jack Holcomb, a truly great singer.
Oh, I could go on and on. I’ve been posting hymns and songs in this blog on weekends for about a year, and I suppose many of them have been my favorites. So far I’ve listed about 110 of them. I love them all.
Music is a marvelous gift of God. I love what people have done with this gift, fashioning it with instruments, organizing it with musical scores, recognizing the human voice as a finely tuned instrument itself, changing tempos, creating symphonies, and devising music of so many varieties I cannot possibly name them all.
In the Bible, King Saul had episodes of depression and despair that were eased when David came into his room and played the harp. As the saying goes, “Music has charms to soothe the savage beast” [a misquote from a play by William Congreve (1670-1729)]. I love it all, from “The Messiah” to “Do, Lord.” My favorite is the one to which I am listening at any given moment. As I write this the William Tell Overture is playing on the Cable TV, and I love it.