Thought for August 2022

Dear Friends, 

You are probably familiar with the words, ‘O Lord my God! when I in awesome wonder consider all the works Thy hand hath made’. These are the opening words of the hymn ‘How great Thou art!’ which has regularly appeared in the list of the nation’s favourite hymns. It started life as a Swedish poem ‘O Store Gud’ (O Great God), written by poet and lay minister Carl Boberg in 1885, and is said to have been inspired by a sudden violent thunderstorm which he was caught in on his way home from church one day. According to the hymnologist J Irving Erickson, Boberg and his friends on their journey encountered a thundercloud on the horizon and soon lightning flashed across the sky, strong winds swept over the meadows and billowing fields of grain, thunderclaps rang out loud, cool fresh showers of rain watered the earth, and then the storm was over, and a rainbow appeared in the sky. After the storm had cleared and Boberg had returned home, he opened his window and looked out towards the sea. The evening was quiet, and he could hear the sound of church bells ringing, and it was these sights and sounds that inspired him to write the words of ‘O Store Gud’. But it was the British missionary Stuart K Hine who translated it into English, creating the paraphrase ‘How great Thou art!’. He was born in 1899 and was a member of the Salvation Army in his youth. He was baptised in 1914 and was greatly influenced in his faith through the teachings and writings of the Baptist ‘Prince of Preachers’, Charles H Spurgeon. He subsequently became a Methodist missionary, and it was whilst he was on an evangelistic mission to the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine that he heard the hymn. His translation was done from Russian lyrics, which were a translation of German lyrics, which were a translation of the original Swedish lyrics, and he added two further original verses of his own including, ‘And when I think that God, his Son not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce can take it in; that on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, he bled and died to take away my sin’. Perhaps over these summer weeks you might like to take some time ponder and think upon those words, and what they mean to you.

Grace and peace,

Neil 

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