“O God Our Help In Ages Past” is a venerable hymn on God’s eternal faithfulness. Isaac Watts wrote the text as a paraphrase of Psalm 90:1-6, looking to God as the one constant in a changing world, a rock in the midst of the passing stream of time.
Practice Resurrection: A Reading of Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto”
Berry’s “Manifesto”… is more than a commentary on culture and politics, it is a commentary on the human condition.
Hymn Guide: Great Is Thy Faithfulness
With Lamentations 3:22–23 in mind, Thomas Chisholm wrote “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” after declining health forced him to leave the pastoral vocation he loved. He knew disappointment; he knew God’s faithfulness.
George Washington: Vestryman and Lifelong Anglican
George Washington was born into a deeply Anglican family and remained a faithful Anglican layman for his entire life. He was baptized in the church as an infant, married a pious Anglican woman, and was buried with the burial office from the 1789 Book of Common Prayer. In between these sacramental milestones, Washington served as…
Hymn Guide: Holy, Holy, Holy
“Holy, Holy, Holy” is not only a classic hymn about the Trinity; it is also a song of adoration and personal worship of the triune God. Every verse begins with the thrice-holy acclamation of God upon his throne.
O, The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus: Carried By His Current
Before I understood theology, I understood this: the love of Christ was not something I had to reach for. It was something I was already being held within. We do not learn the love of Christ by mastering it, but by receiving it.
Hymn Guide: The King of Love My Shepherd Is
If Psalm 23 had been written by Saint Peter rather than King David, the result would be something like “The King of Love My Shepherd Is.”
Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God: A Reading of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV
“Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God,” also known as Holy Sonnet XIV, is the 17th-century poet-priest John Donne’s brilliant and controversial poem on the primacy of God’s grace in our salvation. Using both martial and marital metaphors, Donne calls God to action, pleading for rescue from our spiritual enemy. Theologically, the poem reflects the reformed principle…
The Anglican Poet-Priests
Anglicanism’s beautiful use of language has shaped the many Christian believers it has discipled. There should be no surprise, then, that the Anglican tradition has produced centuries of poets among its adherents—even its very clergy.
Hymn Guide: Jesus Christ Is Risen Today
This hymn is nearly synonymous with Easter. It is sung in every church (worth its salt) on the morning of Easter Sunday. The title of its tune, so rousing with its many Alleluias, is simply EASTER HYMN. If you haven’t sung it, have you really celebrated Easter?
Hymn Guide: Deck Thyself, My Soul, with Gladness
We may put on this facade because of social pressure, self-deception, or a theology that forgets that Jesus himself wept, suffered, and died. Then there is also the opposite temptation, to wallow in sadness, as if our Lord did not rise again from the grave. “Deck Thyself, My Soul, with Gladness” is a hymn that addresses these complex emotions with honesty, beauty, and authentic hope.
The Bread of Life: Healing and The Eucharist
The risen Christ showed his scars—healed and transformed—to his disciples. The Eucharist joins us to that same reality. Not to minimize suffering or explain it away, but to acknowledge it. The table knows that we often need care before we consciously recognize it.
