Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A Perfect Pair

Last Sunday we sang a couple of songs that make a perfect pair. One was written in 1997. The other was first published in 1826.

But notice how the text of one leads right into the other.

Holy, holy, holy. Though the darkness hide Thee.
Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see.
Only Thou art holy. There is none beside Thee.
Perfect in power, in love in purity.

Open the eyes of my heart Lord. Open the eyes of my heart, I want to see You.
To see You high and lifted up, Shining in the light of Your glory.
Pour out Your power and love as we sing "Holy, holy, holy."

I pray that as we sing these together our congregation connects those thoughts of our sinfulness clouding our eyes where we cannot see God in His glory but that as we get a glimpse of Him we want to see Him more.

Open the eyes of our hearts Lord!

Now for you music people out there who wonder how we put these two together, here's how we did it last Sunday. We sang the first verse of "Holy, Holy, Holy" (and I told the musicians to perk it up, not to play it like an old hymn) Then we sang the third verse - which is the one I quoted above - unaccompanied, slower - hopefully thinking about what we are singing. As we sang the last word of that verse, "purity," the pianist played the first measure of "Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord." Then after singing that through a couple of times we sang the fourth verse of "Holy, Holy, Holy" with the same tempo and drum rhythm then went back to "Open the Eyes of My Heart." We sing them both in "D" but I suppose you could do them both in "E" if you want to sing a little higher.

I love how it works together.



Totally unrelated...
Give me a knife and I'll pare the pair of pears. And we wonder why it's difficult for people to learn English.

Since I like to include pictures in my blog posts, here is another perfect pear.





This is a painting by a friend of mine, Jean Hood, who lives in Texas. You can check out her other paintings on her blog. http://jeanleverthood.blogspot.com/2009/10/oil-painting-study-pears-and-cherries.html

3 comments:

TreasuresFromHawaii said...

Holy,Holy,Holy & Open the Eyes Of My Heart are two of my favorite hymns/worship songs ~ Jean is one of my favorite artists! As a fellow follower of Christ here, in Kauai, HI, I found your blog through your link to Jean's painting...I am now a follower of your blog ~ God works in mysterious ways...God Bless! Dava Shepherd

www.treasuresfromhawaii.etsy.com
www.cafepress.com/TreasuresFromHI

Jean Levert Hood said...

Lyndel, thank you so much for sharing my painting on your blog! Your kindness is so apparent in your congregation, your family, and to your artists friends!!

Dava - Lyndel's blogs are great, love his family one, too. How he finds time to do all he does, I'll never know! and yes, he's a wonderful example of LIVING the Christian life.

Irene said...

Amen! God has blessed Hilldale Baptist Church in an awesome way, having Bro. Lyndel as our worship pastor. Bro. Lyndel, I love the way you put songs together and put "life" into them! Thank you for ALL you do! I have chosen another passage to learn that made me think of you. It is from Romans 15 (The Message):
May our dependably steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all. Then we'll be a choir--not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to the God and Father of our Master Jesus!