How Great Thou Art

I am sure you have a song that when you hear it, you get transported to some other place and time. Every time I hear “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens, I immediately go back to that first kiss with my then girlfriend, now wife.

You are probably familiar with the hymn “How Great Thou Art.” Whenever I hear it, or sing it, it takes me to a place for which I have no words. The hymn is based upon the poem “O Store Gud” (O Great God) written by the Swedish pastor Carl Gustav Boberg in 1885. As he walked home from church one afternoon, a violent thunderstorm raged around him. Thunder clapped. Lightning flashed. Strong winds swept over the meadows. The rains came down. By the time Boberg got home, the storm had subsided; a peaceful calm had settled in. Out his window he heard birds chirping, church bells ringing, and as he gazed out at the lake, not a single ripple stirred its water. It was this contrast between violent and calm that inspired him to write the poem.

Eventually the poem was translated first into German and then into Russian before becoming a hymn. In 1949, the British missionary Stuart K. Hine translated the hymn from Russian into English and added several verses, making it the hymn we know today. You know how the hymn begins, “O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed.” And knowing the back story helps verse two make sense, “When through the woods and forest glades I wander, And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees, When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur, And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze.”

There might be no better description of God’s love for us than these lyrics from the hymn, “And when I think that God, His Son not sparing, Sent Him to die, I scarce to take it in, That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin.”

And maybe no better response to that love than these words, “Then sings my soul, My Savior God to Thee, How great Thou art, How great Thou art.”

David penned these words as he began his last psalm – “I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable” (145:1-3). Click here to read Psalm 145 in its entirety. I believe this is the only psalm that self-identifies as a song of praise (Hebrew: tehillah).

Thank you, Father, for sending Your Son to take away our sins, how great You are!!!  

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