I know I’ve said this before, but it’s doubly true now… I love hymns!! My two current favorites are “Immortal, Invisible” and “The Master Hath Come.” I’ve probably listened to these two songs 30 times each in the last week.

In these times of change and preparation for change, I feel God leading me to simplify. There is such a thing as too much information. Pastor Eric’s post with the video about how we’re living in exponential times really grabbed my attention. Through it I heard God whispering that it’s time to go back to the basics. His Word. Not what other people think about His Word, or what they think His Word means, but His Word—pure and simple, and interpreted and applied by the very Spirit of God Himself within me.

And I believe He has drawn my affection and appetite towards hymns as well. The other day I was expressing to my husband how much I love them, when suddenly it clicked in my head why I love them so much, and why I believe God loves them, too.

Many of the hymns I love the most have come to us through centuries gone by. “Be Thou My Vision” was written in the 9th century. Most of the other hymns I most dearly love come from the 1600’s, 1700’s or 1800’s. The people who wrote these beautiful God-soaked songs did not have minds that were cluttered and confused by millions of megabytes of information from multiple sources every single day…

Their lives were so much more simple than ours are, and when they set their minds to study the scriptures, that’s what they did! Sometimes they would study the scriptures for hours and hours every day. Most of their world-views were utterly God-centered, and they viewed all of Creation as existing by Him and for His glory. The songs they wrote were an overflowing of the God-reality that they ate and drank and breathed all day long every day.

Being a Christian wife, mother, church member, employee, homeowner, homemaker, friend, daughter, and citizen, in today's world and this time in history—I will never have time to study and have my mind truly, irrevocably renewed by God’s Word as whole-heartedly as these people did. But praise God! He has left us with the fruit of their joyful labors! He has left us with a bountiful storehouse of concentrated, healing, amazingly beautiful truth about Himself. And all of it is set to music, which somehow seems to open the doors to my heart in ways that simple speaking never could.

May His matchless name be praised forever!