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 old hymns.
Today’s song is O Day of Rest and Gladness from 1862.
1 O day of rest and gladness,
O day of joy and light,
O balm of care and sadness,
most beautiful, most bright;
on thee the high and lowly,
through ages joined in tune,
sing “Holy, holy, holy,”
to the great God Triune.
2 On thee, at the creation,
the light first had its birth;
on thee, for our salvation,
Christ rose from depths of earth;
on thee, our Lord victorious,
the Spirit sent from heav’n;
and thus on thee, most glorious,
a triple light was given.
3 Today on weary nations
the heav’nly manna falls;
to holy convocations
the silver trumpet calls,
where gospel light is glowing
with pure and radiant beams,
and living water flowing
with soul-refreshing streams.
4 New graces ever gaining
from this our day of rest,
we reach the rest remaining
to spirits of the blest;
to Holy Ghost be praises,
to Father, and to Son;
the church her voice upraises
to Thee, blest Three in One.
I don’t know many hymns about the Lord’s Day/Sabbath. Most of the talk about the Sabbath in the New Testament relates to the Pharisees bullying everyone into keeping their rules about it. They even tried to bully Jesus, and they resented Him healing on the Sabbath. People take different outlooks on the Sabbath. Some believe it didn’t carry over into the New Testament church. Some think it became Sunday – the day of the resurrection. But it certainly became a tradition to have Sunday as a special day. I used to dislike Sundays as a child because it was followed by school on Monday. And it was followed by work in later years 😀. It’s funny how the next day dominates my thinking more than today. For example, Friday is happy became I’m off on Saturday. The same kinda thing happens with holidays. I remember liking the last week of work before the holiday more than the last week of the holiday before returning to work.
But since I committed my life to Christ, I’ve always enjoyed meeting with other believers every Sunday. And I try to make an effort to spend more time on private devotions on Sundays too. In some ways, this is a peculiar hymn. Yet, it’s nice to celebrate the tradition of our day of rest. In my lifetime, we had both Saturday and Sunday off. But in past ages, but for Sunday, people might not have had any day of rest. I read that even slaves got a day off on a Sunday. And we certainly shouldn’t make up our own rules about Sunday and boss people around. Paul touched on this in the book of Romans:
Romans 14: 5-6
5 One person considers one day more sacred than another;Â another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. 6 Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God;Â and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.
We should agree on fundamental issues, but Paul encouraged freedom of conscience on secondary issues. Because keeping the Sabbath holy is one of the ten commandments, some say that it should apply today. But the precise details on how we apply it is subject to debate.
Here’s an interesting discussion on the issue:
And here are some other versions of today’s hymn:
