Hymns: Praise Your Name

Now that Christmas is well and truly finished 😞, I’m going back to exploring modern worship songs. But maybe I’ll run out of very modern ones sometime soon. So, I’ll choose some kind of a hymn each day. But for the next few weeks, I’ll try to stick to the very modern hymns.

Today, I’ve chosen Praise Your Name.

What attracted me to this one was seeing Brian May in the video. I’m old enough to remember January 1976, 50 years ago 🤯. Queen were number 1 with Bohemian Rhapsody:

Here’s the top 10:

1 Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
2 Glass of Champagne – Sailor
3 Mamma Mia – Abba
4 In Dulci Jubilo – Mike Oldfield
5 Art for Arts Sake – 10cc
6 Let’s Twist Again – Chubby Checker
7 Wide Eyed and Legless – Andy Fairweather-Low
8 Kings of the Cops – Billy Howard
9 Itcycoo Park – The Small Faces
10 Happy to be on an Island in the Sun – Demis Roussos

What about the song itself? Well, I don’t know if it’s sung in churches, but I love the lyrics. I think of it as a 21st Century psalm. Looks like Talia is a Roman Catholic (like I was once), but as an evangelical, I would be delighted to sing the hymn. I just wish that more Catholic devotion was directed to God rather than to saints and statues etc.

I do love the song, but Brian May’s involvement got me thinking about Christianity and rock music. When I was a teenager, the dominant music was punk. I wasn’t a particularly violent or nasty type, but listening to such music made me feel more manly 😄.

But now things have changed. Among the biggest groups of the 21st Century are U2 and Coldplay. I thoroughly enjoy watching their concerts. Even if they’re not explicitly evangelical, their concerts make me feel like I feel in church. You get a great sense of love between everyone. Back in the punk scene in the 1970s, it could be quite scary going to concerts. It wasn’t all that violent, but it sometimes brought out the worst in people.

And church music has become more like high quality secular music:

For most of my evangelical life, I cringed at Christians trying to be “trendy”. I preferred the old hymns. Perhaps I still do, but it is intriguing to see how things have developed. Some wonderful evangelical people that I’ve know would avoid any kind of worldly music. And they would despise the modern worship scene. Perhaps there’s much to criticise in it, but it brings me joy to see people praising God – and to see Brian May in a worship video 😄.

When I think of avoiding “worldliness”, I remember how Jesus didn’t call on his followers to go off and live in their own community, away from everyone. He mixed and mingled with all kinds of people. It’s fine if you hope to influence them for good rather than come under the influence of people who will lead you away from God.

Way back in 1986, Queen had a hit with Brian May’s Who Wants to Live Forever. I only really listened properly to the song about 10 years later. It explores the disappointment we feel in life. We expect something very special, but we don’t get it.

There's no time for us
There's no place for us
What is this thing that builds our dreams
Yet slips away from us?

And then, it goes on to portray a loving relationship as something that can bring meaning into your life. I’d love to see Brian May rewriting the song, and Talia singing the new version. Human relationships can bring meaning, but a relationship with God can truly fill the void, as Augustine stated:

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Maybe the song doesn’t even need to be rewritten. We just need to think of God being the ultimate answer.