Sunday, November 26, 2006

Celebrating Christ the King

Today, the festival of Christ the King, is my favorite day of the church year from a standpoint of music. Some of the most beautiful and powerful hymns of praise ever written are sung only on the festival of Christ the King. Here are some well-loved songs suited to the day, some of these almost guaranteed never to be heard on any other day of the church year:
  • Crown Him With Many Crowns
  • All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name
  • Rejoice, the Lord is King
  • King of Kings
  • Majesty

My favorite of these, "Crown Him With Many Crowns," is among the many hymns now in the public domain. Here is my favorite verse of my favorite hymn for Christ the King Sunday. Feel free to hum along as you read ... it will be as if we were all singing. ;)

Crown him the Lord of Love
Behold his hands and side.
Rich wounds yet visible above
In beauty glorified.
No angel in the sky
Can fully bear that sight,
But downward bends his burning eye
At mysteries so bright.

Our congregation is blessed that we do have some sopranos who can actually hit the spine-tingling and majestic descant that goes with that song. Nevermind the descant or even the soprano part for me, I'm down on the alto part.

But not to neglect the beauties of those other songs, here is my favorite section of "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name":
Sinners, whose love can never forget
The wormwood and the gall
Go spread your trophies at his feet
And crown him Lord of all.
Go spread your trophies at his feet
And crown him Lord of all.

1 comment:

Andii said...

Hi.
First, thanks for offering to host the holy couple in an e-posada on their i-journey. Please find below a schedule which I hope will be okay.
Secondly, please accept apologies for short notice if you are early on the list.
What follows is an adaptation of instructions which will be appearing on the Nouslife blog as part of the first e-posada posting.

I have simply tried to put them in order of offering. You'll notice we get as far as 19 Dec so further recruitment or even offering to host on another of your blogs is great.

Swaps are okay provided the chain of reference from one host to the next is not broken. Remember that the previous or next person in the chain may not know who you are so your predecessor will need a visit from you as soon after you have posted as you can manage to put a link in their comments so the rest of us can follow the trail to your posting.

I suggest that everyone links to my 'originating" Advent Sunday post post when it appears, so that it is easy to get back here in case there are new posters whom I shall add to the list. Could I also ask you to email me if you think that I don't have your email address at this temporary (for the next few days) email address as I don't have everyone's contact details in case we need to do some troubleshooting. If you would check the blog addresses -I've made some educated guesses below- I can put corrections in here so people can get in the right vicinity if something goes awry.

Mon 4 Dec Chris Munroe aka Desert Pastor.
Tue 5 Dec Jem Clines
Wed 6 Dec Alistair
Thu 7 Dec Lydia
Fri 8 Dec Jennie Swanson
Sat 9 Dec Psalmist
Sun 10 Dec Dr Platypus
Mon 11 Dec Sally Coleman
Tue 12 Dec Jim Palmer
Wed 13 Dec Anne Gogh
Thu 14 Dec Weekend Fisher
Fri 15 Dec Dave
Sat 16 Dec John Cooper
Sun 17 Dec Sue Wallace at Abbess
Mon 18 Dec Lucas
Tue 19 Joanna at Keeping Feet

Thanks, with prayer that this will be a venture that enriches us and all our readers with fuller appreciation of God's gifts to us...
-Andii