Monday, August 29, 2016

Giving Birth, the Epidural, and Writing Hymn Poetry (NRH 04)

NEW REFORMATION HYMN 04 (NRH 04) Triumphant Jesus (Long Meter, LM, 8.8.8.8.)

While reading CH Spurgeon's Morning and Evening, wherein he was waxing eloquent (as only Spurgeon can do and so often does) on the phrase "The Lord mighty in battle" from Psalm 24, the following lines came to me, considerably more rapidly and effortlessly than is remotely normal for me. Poetry is whole-being labor, not quite so extreme as that cosmic and peculiar kind God carried my wife through six times over when delivering our children into the world, but to me at times it feels sort of like that when writing. But not on this one. I had a spiritual, theological, and poetic epidural anesthesia.

Triumphant Jesus is another effort of mine to write Psalm-like lyrics, the veil torn back, and all the glorious blessings of the New Covenant in full view, lyrics that have that Psalm-like warrior component so appealing to young men--and, alas, so conspicuously absent in the output of the well-intentioned but sometimes vacuously emotive lyric of some worship leaders shaped more by the dictates of a feminized culture than by the themes and attitudes of the Psalms. (Hymn poetry) Several able composers have written fine music for this lyric.

Triumphant Jesus bore the cross
Of cruel passion, curse, and loss;
He routed sin, and death, and woe,
And Satan my infernal foe.                   

Yet does the fiend still prowl and lurk,
His schemes upon my heart to work.
But God before me who can stand
When Christ in battle guides my hand?

Since Christ my Savior works within,
No more am I a slave of sin.
The hopes of hell and Satan wrecked,
No more can he charge God’s elect.

No power of flesh or demon’s might
Can snatch from me Christ’s blood-bought right.
I more than conquer by the Word
Of Christ my Captain and my Lord!

                                Douglas Bond, Copyright, December 12, 2007

No comments:

Post a Comment