I’ve been enjoying the challenge over the last few weeks of preaching on subjects that folks in the congregation have asked to be dealt with.  We’ve covered giving, the Great Commandment, Hell, the Brutality of God in the Old Testament, and would Jesus recognise today’s church?  (Light topics, I know!)

However, I’ve been keeping the last two Sundays, fittingly, until the end as I begin two weeks of preaching on ‘Heaven’.  The first Sunday will be entitled ‘Heaven:  what are we hoping for?’ and the second Sunday will be ‘Heaven: what are we living for?’   Basically, I’ll be sharing the vision of the New Heavens and New Earth which writers like NT Wright so eloquently expound upon.

The interesting challenge came in trying to pick songs/hymns to go with the theology, given that much hymnology takes a ‘sweet by-and-by’, ‘I’ll fly away’, ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ type of theology.  So, unusually, I decided to write a hymn and I hope its decent enough to capture the biblical hope I’ll be speaking about.

As I was writing, I simply became aware of the power of hymnology to help people ‘Sing the Faith’ and take teaching to heart…the Wesleys and Booths were on to something!

Its in 8.7.8.7.D Trochaic meter, which means you can sing it to tunes like ‘Love Divine’, ‘Hydrofol’, ‘Blaenwern’, etc etc but the tune I had in mind was the lovely tune that one would sing ‘Here is love vast as the ocean’ which is called ‘Dim Ond Iesu.’  So…here are the words…sing up now!