Hymn of Heaven -- Brian Johnson, Phil Wickham, Bill Johnson, Chris Davenport

 

It was a tough time, a particular two weeks during the year 2020, when Phil Wickham says the world’s volume was pretty loud and overwhelming. If you don’t remember, it is probably a year that most people on planet Earth would rather forget, because of a one-word crisis that spoke of something that last occurred a century earlier: Pandemic. Though he doesn’t say directly that it was the pandemic, Phil’s response to that year’s events would be apt no matter what the predicament might actually have been for him personally. Instead of feeling trapped terrestrially, Phil decided to place himself, emotionally and spiritually, in heaven (see here a 19th Century depiction of Heaven, author Gustave Dore, Rosa Celeste: Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven, The Empyrean; in The Divine Comedy by Dante), because he trusted God, who has said circumstances in eternity will be radically different. Phil didn’t feel like waiting for the journey to heaven; he determined that he could help usher in a song that would be fitting for that eternal place – a “Hymn of Heaven”.  

Phil Wickham says he sees the ‘Hymn of Heaven’ as one that’s full of hope, a kind of prayer for us to have Jesus as king now. And, it’s not just one that’s reserved strictly for believers, but that the whole world can sing the same song if it chooses to do so. Something pretty distracting was trying to grab his attention, and so Phil says he needed the perspective of God being on the throne as king, to remind himself that God was still Lord, the Creator. Some people might actually think that means ‘I will eventually go to meet Him, one day’, and so be willing to endure whatever transpires here below. But, Phil responds that by the end of the song he had opted to think of his and everyone else’s situation in a different way. Instead of escaping eventually to heaven, why not trust God that the kingdom is already here, ‘in the way we act, speak, and live…let Jesus take over in His way’? Nevertheless, Phil didn’t have on rose-colored glasses, and most of this song’s poetry does admit what one sees before his eyes while still mortal – that one ‘long(s) to breathe the air of Heaven’ (v.1). ‘There will be a day…’, and ‘that day’ echo through the verses, so we are called to acknowledge that what we will inherit eventually is still off in the distance. But why wait? Phil and his collaborators (Brian Johnson, Bill Johnson, and Chris Davenport) evidently believed collectively in the hopefulness of God’s promises – that there is great strength in believing today what He has guaranteed for tomorrow. So, there’s another set of words  -- ‘Holy holy is the Lord’ – that reverberates in the words they set to music. These words have us calling out very much like the angels in one prophet’s vision (Isaiah 6:3), or like exotic living creatures in another’s revelation (Revelation 4:8). Join in with those beings who are already celebrating!

The words of Phil, Brian, Bill, and Chris are an invitation, but one that doesn’t avoid what goes on around us. There’s a certain amount of ‘pain’, ‘desperation’, and eventually ‘death’ and a ‘grave’ – enough to impose ‘doubt’ and ‘fear’ and ‘tears’ (all words that this quartet of musicians use in their lyrics) on even the most devoted God-followers. Could that be why they coax us to call out, with voices saying something like what the angels and the living creatures said in heavenly visions? Those beings say ‘holy’ three times, according to Isaiah and John, while Phil and his cohorts have us utter ‘holy’ just twice. We can call out to Him, can imagine ourselves being with Him forever, and understand we’re getting the foretaste, a preview or a sample, of what’s to come. I straddle the divide between here and there, and so do you. I’m warming up my voice with the two holies, in expectation of the three holies, and the complete eyes-on-God, no-more-waiting, clock-is-off, eternal morning. Get ready to ‘shout’ and ‘raise a mighty roar’ with that third holy!

 

 

See song story here: Bing Videos

 

See here for information about the song and the album with the same name: Hymn of Heaven - Wikipedia

 

See here for brief description of the song’s story: Hymn of Heaven (song) - Wikipedia

 

See/hear some of the song’s words here: Bing Videos

 

See link here for image of heaven information: File:Paradiso Canto 31.jpg - Wikimedia Commons. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1928.

Oh the Deep Deep Love -- Samuel Trevor Francis (and Bob Kauflin)

 

He wasn’t the first to contemplate a radical solution to his misery, nor the first to instead salvage a hymn from his experience. It was a turning point for Samuel Trevor Francis, perhaps something that might be described as an epiphany when he thought about it years later and said “Oh the Deep Deep Love” about the God that he felt had saved him one night. What he wrote suggests he was looking upon a mighty body of water, and comparing that scene to what he’d probably read so many times before from the pen of an apostle. What might you and I ponder if we were on a bridge over the River Thames in London? (See a picture here of the Hungerford Bridge over that river, as it might have looked to Samuel Francis in 1845, some 30 years before he authored the hymn.) Is one’s life too gloomy to be saved by a God with a love that knows no bounds? That’s what Samuel asked himself.

 

Could a nighttime walk over the Thames while wallowing in his despondency decades earlier have been what Samuel was remembering as he reached middle age in 1875? This 41-year-old London merchant and preacher had apparently suffered from some depression as a teenager, and thus thought briefly about suicide one winter night as he walked across a bridge. Did the cold, roiling water change his mind, or was it his recollection of what an apostle wrote about the vast dimensions -- how deep God’s love is (Ephesians 3:17-19) – that helped him overcome this momentary darkness? Admittedly, we in the 21^st Century have only a general comment from this 19^th Century author, many years after this incident, to evaluate precisely if this bridge episode had indeed stuck with him and motivated ‘Oh, the Deep…’ in 1875. And yet, his own remarks (in an 1898 publication of some of his hymns; see them in the Hymnology Archive link below) indicate that many of his works were sparked by his desire to show how someone can overcome a despairing life with the love of God. ‘Oh, the Deep…’ fits seamlessly into that category. Certainly, the multiple references to water bodies signal that Samuel was observing a piece of His watery creation, one that especially struck him. It was ‘vast, unmeasured, boundless, free’ (v.1), and ‘ocean’ (vv.1 and 3) could suggest he was alternately near the English coast, observing the North Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, or the English Channel, instead of the River Thames in London. Any of these bodies of water would have served his temporary urge to end his life! Fortunately, he also discovered that God’s love was a ‘current’,’all around’ and ‘underneath’ him (v.1), that His praise could travel from ‘shore to shore’ (v.2). He returns again and again to how deep – one ‘deep’ is not enough – is God’s care and longing for us. His provision in this life is like that Divine River of Life that transports the soul ‘onward’ and ‘homeward’ (v.1).

 

The power of water, that is something perhaps unappreciated until you’ve seen what it can do in a flood or worse yet a tidal wave. Samuel Francis must have thought about what it would mean to drown in the Thames or elsewhere, how suffocating in water would feel, and how it might have been for those who scorned God’s provision in Noah’s day. Those are the negative examples of God’s water. God also makes transport possible with it, provides life in it – fish and other creatures man can consume for nourishment – and how it is necessary to make land-based crops grow to feed and sustain us and the rest of his creation. Samuel was likewise pondering the positives of God’s watery ingenuity, one night on a bridge. What He’s made can point to Him, if I’ll just take a moment to turn around my negative thoughts and look at things from a different direction. That’s what Samuel did. Would you prefer to drown or ride the waves?         

 

See here for some biographic information on the original writer: S. Trevor Francis | Hymnary.org

 

See here also for biographic information on the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Trevor_Francis

 

See information on the hymn here: O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus - Wikipedia

 

See more information on the song and its writer here: O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus - The Center For Church Music, Songs and Hymns

 

See some pretty extensive notes on the song here (including a brief note on how the new chorus was written by Bob Kauflin): O the deep, deep love of Jesus — Hymnology Archive

 

See this link for image of the Hungerford Bridge over the River Thames in London, and its public domain status: File:Hungerford Suspension Bridge (1845).jpg - Wikimedia Commons  The following statement appears with the image: This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. {{PD-US-expired}} – published anywhere (or registered with the US Copyright Office) before 1928 and public domain in the US.