For the Joy of Sacred Music

I’m not sure if I can remember the first hymn I ever learned to play, but I do think it was at my maternal grandparents’ house on their antique upright piano, which had once belonged to an Aunt Ada. The story goes that my mother was beginning to take piano lessons, but didn’t have a piano, so Aunt Ada gave this piano to her. It resided in my grandparents’ living room, a room in the South that you only used if there was an important celebration or guests were visiting. Other than those two options, sitting on the furniture or walking on the rugs was forbidden.

By the time I had come along, tuning the piano was a fruitless task as the age of the instrument would not allow for the proper tension on the strings. I remember visiting once and my grandfather saying, “We just had the piano tuned for you. The tuner said we should look at getting another one, and that it would be useless to keep tuning it or any other maintenance without spending a lot of money.” I think as normal for my grandfather, that advice went in one ear and out the other when it came to his grandchildren and this piano. It wasn’t just another piano. It was a Cable Piano Company piano that had belonged to one of his aunts, and music was an important connector.

Going back to the earliest years of Center Hill Baptist Church in Hamilton, Mississippi, my grandfather’s family was always a presence, with his mother being one of the pianists for the church, as the stories are told. Music, and especially of that of hymns were highly important, and being able to hear your youngest grandchild open a hymnal and just play the melody of a hymn you grew up singing must have brought him much happiness.

For many of us singing, or even hearing, our favorite hymn wells up memories of our loved ones and life past. I believe it must have been the same for my grandparents. A few years have passed since their death, and I couldn’t even begin to tell you their favorite hymns, even if I knew them in the first place. Although I will never forget sitting at the humongous upright piano picking my way through “Nearer My God to Thee” or whatever I was attempting.

Music (and hymns) connect us to the good and bad in life, and there are countless stories of the hymn writers composing the texts or tunes in strife, as well as joy. One of the most famous stories is that of “Amazing Grace” being penned by a former slave trader, although it was not written in the midst of a literal storm at sea. It was written many years later while John Newton was advocating for the abolishment of the slave trade in the United Kingdom. Fanny J. Crosby was possibly the most prolific of the American hymn authors writing in excel of 2,000 hymns, many of which are still sung today (“Blesses Assurance,” “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior,” “Jesus is Tenderly Calling,” and “To God Be the Glory” just to name a few).

Next time you enter a church, look for a hymnal. It can tell you a lot about our individual walks with Christ. As Martin Luther once wrote: “Next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise. The gift of language combined with the gift of song was given to man that he should proclaim the Word of God through music.”