I’m sitting in a meeting in Irving this morning (as I was all day yesterday) and I remembered I failed to post yesterday.
So, I’ll drop a short post here on a song where we’ve deleted a whole phrase that completely impacts the entire song’s message…
The song is Holy, Holy, Holy.
All evidence, without having many of my sources here with me, point to the fact that the original text of this song’s last phrase was originally composed as “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.” Over the years, early in the 1922 edition of Jorgenson’s Great Songs, Number One, Churches of Christ editors changed that line to read “God over all and blessed eternally.”
Why are we afraid to talk about Father, Son, and Spirit? This “aloof” concept of the Trinity in our hymns, songs and also in our worship has been absent historically…today it is coming back into the lyrics of contemporary hymns increasingly…this is a good thing too…But why have we chosen to stay content, by and large, not singing the original text of this incredibly, meaningful and world-wide popular hymn?
I totally agree! In fact, this song is the reason that I have never had trouble with the idea of the Trinity. I sang it so much as a kid that it came to be a part of who I am and what I believe. Now, I can’t tell you how the Father, Son and Spirit always relate to each other and all, but I never had an issue believing all three were active and vital to faith.
I remember singing the blessed Trinity as a child and wondered why it was changed when I was older. If we aren’t acknowledging the Spirit, we aren’t acknowledging the Father or Son, either. I am so thankful for the new songs that are acknowledging the Spirit. It makes me sad to think that because our forefathers were scared of the Spirit (or perhaps the gifts of the Spirit,) so many of us have missed out on knowing that part of the Trinity.
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