We sing to God

We sing to God; we sing our thanks and praises.

Honor and reverence to our Lord we bring.

Yet too we sing our suffering and longing; 

We lift our voice to God in every thing.

In Christ redeemed, by Holy Spirit strengthened,

In all our worship to our God we sing.

We sing for God; we join the endless chorus 

Of all who learn by heart the holy song: 

The cloud of witnesses, the host of heaven,

Lifting their voices through the ages long.

In Christ redeemed, by Holy Spirit strengthened,

In holy union for our God we sing.

 

We sing of God; our chorus bears our witness. 

We show God’s goodness in our songful play.

In song from every corner of creation,

We witness to the truth, the life, the way.

In Christ redeemed, by Holy Spirit strengthened,

To this world’s yearning, of our God we sing.

 

We sing with God; the Singer of creation

Leads in the song we join with boundless glee:

The song of ages, new and yet eternal,

Of all that was, and is, and is to be.

In Christ redeemed, by Holy Spirit strengthened,

Now and forever, with our God we sing.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, November 2020

MUSIC: Tune FINLANDIA, Jean Sibelius, 1899.

 

 

Truthfully, I can’t say where this one came from. Frankly I’ve been quite blocked in every kind of writing of late (I can’t even write a postcard without fighting through existential angst), and somehow my brain got from there to a song about singing. I suppose the one thing that might make this one stand apart from other hymns about song is that (as I’ve had to learn in recent years) not all songs are songs of big exuberant joy, and yet God wants us to sing them all (or so I hope).

NOTE: while Sibelius’s stalwart tune has passed into public domain, be advised that any arrangement you find in your hymnal is likely under some copyright or other.