Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs

When we were anticipating coming to France one of the things I knew I would miss is the strong "meat and taters" hymns we sang in North Wales. We sing modern songs in France, like we did in Deeside, but we don't sing many of the strong old "meat and taters" hymns.

However, we do read lots from the psalms.

In my opinion the psalms are really important for worship, whether in Isaac Watts type gospelisations, or in free interpretations like "Praise, my soul, the King of heaven" or "A mighty fortress", or in more straightforward settings.

For one thing the psalms are full of Jesus. What shows the triumph of the gospel as wonderfully as Psalm 72? Or the world's rebellion like Psalm 2? Or Jesus' sufferings like Psalm 22?

The psalms are full of authentic Christian experience, too. There are too few contemporary Christian songs that show the hard experiences of the Christian life. That means that without the older hymns or the psalms you can end up with a huge gap between what you sing on a Sunday and what is really true of your life. The psalms and the older hymns express a fuller range of Christian experience.

Comments

Anonymous said…
On this subject, I have recently been directed to an essay by Carl Trueman called, I think, 'What can miserable Christians sing?' which basically urges more psalm singing. It appears in his book 'The wages of spin' - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1857929942/202-9732801-1253468?v=glance&n=266239&v=glance
11:41 am
Alan said…
He has a point, I think.
12:43 pm
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