March 29, 2023 - Good Morning! It's Wednesday, March 29.
We continue today, during this week leading to Palm Sunday, with a series of devotions on the theme of praise. Contemporary Christian Music is dominated by songs of praise - songs like "How Great is Our God", "10,000 Reasons", and "Raise a Hallelujah". But this morning we focus on a classic hymn of praise, perhaps the greatest ever written - "How Great Thou Art.”
"How Great Thou Art" began its' life, surprisingly, in Sweden. Carl Boberg, a poet, was walking home from church one day in 1885, when a thunderstorm struck, and the power and majesty of that storm inspired him to write this hymn. It saw moderate success and was translated into German, and then into Russian. In the 1930's a British missionary named Stuart Hine encountered the Russian version when he was serving in Ukraine. He translated it into English, and when he returned to England, he brought this hymn back with him.
In 1954, Billy Graham had a great crusade in London, and, during that revival, his song leader, Cliff Barrows, encountered this song. He brought it back to the United States, and at the great crusade in New York City's Madison Square Garden in 1957, it was sung more than one hundred times. That was the beginning of "How Great Thou Art" in America. In 1968 Elvis won a Grammy award for his recording of it, and in 2011, so did country artist, Carrie Underwood. Whomever the singer, whatever the language, this hymn continues to be a powerful song of praise, and is, generally thought to be the world's second favorite hymn, after "Amazing Grace.”
O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout the universe displayed
Then sings my soul, my Savior, God to Thee
How great Thou art! How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior, God to Thee
How great Thou art! How great Thou art!
Meet you back here tomorrow,
Bro. David
dmathis@fbccenter.org
