I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the very modern hymns.
Today’s song is Build Your Kingdom Here from 2012.
I never heard this one sung in church, but I’m always pleased to see Irish worship songs on YouTube, and I like to familiarize myself with them. The title echoes the words from the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And it all starts in our hearts. One day, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and it can begin now within us:
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
Years ago, I returned to University to do a Graduate Diploma in Computing. After I made the decision and my application was accepted, I didn’t just wait until my first lecture. I started preparing myself right away, by studying. I was pleased and excited at the prospect of starting the course. And it’s like that with the new heaven and new earth. God wants us to begin now. And, it’s not just in our hearts. We want to be salt and light in society.
Ireland has been nominally Christian since the time of Patrick. I would have liked Ireland to have become a little bit more like Wales after the Reformation. Wales had their hostilities with England, but they didn’t stick with medieval Roman Catholicism to spite England. In some ways, they developed a much deeper love for the Bible, and they had some notable revivals. Sadly, like so much of the Western world, it feels like it needs a fresh revival, and so does Ireland. So, this hymn being Irish, perhaps it’s about Ireland, but maybe it can apply to any nation, even the whole world.
I was surprised that the song seems so widely known across the world. I’m always most interested when I find versions from far off regions. It would be nice to find a video with Vladimir Putin singing it, but perhaps that would be created by AI 😀. At some stage, I’d like to see what worship songs I can discover from every nation. My daughters are hugely interested in world music, but it would be interesting to find worship songs from every nation. We might be singing them all in heaven.
Hibernia Gospel 