It's bluebell season.

why we call it 'some melodious sonnet'

credit: jen-den1

Some Melodious Sonnet. It's awkward to say, and awkward to spell. Not exactly an ideal name for a blog, but still, there it is.

If you've worked with me, you'll know that am a somewhat reluctant worship leader. On a team of ten people across the Emerald Isle, I am the only guitarist, and although I'm not very musically proficient I love it enough that I ended up taking on this role. Nothing makes me more nervous, but I recognise that this is about more than my nerves or abilities - it is simply, wonderfully about God and what He has asked of me. In this case, it was getting over myself and leading His people in songs of praise to Him. So I surrendered to it.

In my age group, Christian contemporary worship songs have become the norm for sung worship. I will stress here that I love contemporary worship songs. I love the freedom and creativity they give us to express our worship to God, and I love that they equip us for those times when sometimes all we can sing are simple, repeated phrases of adoration. But somewhere along the line, they've become all that many young Christians feel sung worship is. The hymns we have sung for many years are left in the dusty pages of forgotten hymnals, dismissed as the dated ways of the elderly or fundamental. Of course, there are the exceptions of modern hymns - for example, some works by the Gettys or Stuart Townend - but generally speaking I feel that as a generation, we've lost our respect for hymns.

This is a shame, because although there are many times that call for simplicity in sung worship, there are also times that call for elaborate poetry sung in rousing voices or caressing whispers. Hymns are packed full of beautiful descriptions of God, and were my earliest education in theology. Some may have outdated language, but this serves to remind us of our ancestors in the faith and the fact that God's love spans all generations and eras.

I love hymns. But I also love imagination.

And finding reimagined hymns is one of my greatest joys. A change in instrumentation or melody can add a very different facet to our view of the poetry in hymns. Rend Collective Experiment's version of Love Divine, All Loves Excelling is a beautiful example - I adore the arrangement/s as we sing in church but this version offers a more reflective take on it, which adds a beautiful simplicity for times of personal devotion.

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing is a beautiful hymn, lyrically and melodically. My favourite is the modern melody (used by Sufjan Stevens in his version), and this is the one I use when leading worship as I find it that it is easier to sing and offers a beautiful reflective angle to the words. 'Some melodious sonnet' is part of a line from the first verse of the song, where we ask God to tune our hearts to sing his praise. The reason that I used this as the name for this blog is that this is what I want my life to be. A life-song of praise to the Father, Son and Spirit, a life spent in worship in harmony with His will.

It is a beautiful hymn, and it is the last verse that speaks the loudest to my heart.

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrained to be

Let that grace now like a fetter

Bind my wandering heart to Thee

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it

Prone to leave the God I love

Here's my heart, O take and seal it

Seal it for Thy courts about.

A fetter is more commonly known as legcuffs or shackles these days; a type of restraint used on a persons legs. In language, it's where we get the phrases "to be fettered with" and "unfettered" from. Fettered by our responsibilities and our vices, bound, weighed down. Unfettered, unbound, free.

We don't often talk about fetters as such, but in modern Western Protestantism we talk a lot about chains. We talk about the chains of sin, the chains that bind us to that which hurts us and fetter us with our vices and baggage. We talk about God's power to break every chain, about how grace gives us freedom from our trappings. But these words turn that image upside down - instead of grace breaking chains, it becomes is a fetter of its own that binds us to the God who gave us grace in the first place. Chains that take the hearts - the selfish, human hearts - that wander to 'other lovers' and hold them fast and tight to our Lover and God.

We sing a simple Christmas carol each year:

What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb

If I were a wise man, I would do my part

Yet what I can I give him,

Give my heart.

A simple offering, but the only one He asks for. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

So we submit these, the broken, contrite, wandering hearts to God. We surrender and ask that they are bound to God with the beautiful golden fetters of grace. There, only there can we rest, and sing wholeheartedly some melodious sonnet that lifts Him up and gives Him the glory He is due.

violet scent

credit -joopmilder

Forgiveness is the scent the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

- Mark Twain

Forget me not

I challenge you not to smile. Too cute.