Then Sings My Soul (A Series on God's Greatness)

Chapters 1- 6 ~ 10-6-26

The following is a series of columns reflecting on God's greatness, and on perhaps the greatest hymn of all, "How Great Thou Art." Thanks for sharing in these lifelong reflections.

CHAPTER 1

'Then Sings My Soul'

Welcome to the ‘front porch.’ There is so much more to be said about God’s greatness than what we can say in one short sitting. But I never go very long between writings that I want to revisit this theme and, in particular, this song.

It may be the greatest song ever written—‘How Great Thou Art.’ If not, it’s on that top shelf with the best of the best.

The writer of ‘How Great Thou Art’ understood something about God’s glory and majesty.

He had experienced wonders in God’s handiwork that made him stop right where he was and give God the glory. You might think he stood and looked out over the Grand Canyon—ah, from high up there you can sing ‘Then sings my soul my Savior God to thee’ with vigor, can't you! – or up high on the Smoky Mountains looking deep down into the foothills with the fall leaves shifting from color to color and the cool running Pigeon River churning confidently through it.

Carl Bobert, the Swedish preacher who penned these words in 1886, likely never saw either of those wonders, although he would have plenty of his own to admire in the beautiful landscapes of Sweden. Many scenes there display the glories of God and would cause him to sing, and write:

‘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 pow’r throughout the universe displayed.’

The wonder we have of God—as with the song poet here—seems to come in stages.

First, we wonder at God’s greatness, marveling, then we see all that He has made and hear the pow’r of the rolling thunder. Our thoughts, our eyes, our ears all taking in God’s glory.

But there’s something still missing, some sense we possess that we have not yet engaged in our wonder and worship of God—but the writer will not leave it that way for long. As we come to the resounding chorus, he takes the wonder of his soul to new heights, writing,

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee; how great Thou art, how great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee; how great Thou art, how great Thou art!’

There we go to the depths of our being, down into our very soul. Our wonder looks up to the heights while our emotions reach down to the depths. Our whole being is overwhelmed with God’s glory, as we proclaim from deep in our souls, ‘How great Thou art.’ A single journey through that glad, triumphant refrain is not enough, for we must echo it, its ascending crescendo taking it to even greater heights than before:

“Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee; how great Thou art, how great Thou art!”

Thus, we sing today and every day that we live the glory of our Savior and the glory of our God. We acknowledge His greatness in our minds, marvel at it with our eyes, wonder at it with what we hear, and sing it, proclaim it, with all that we have—and all that we are— deep down in our souls.

Then sings my soul!

We sing it then—when we are overwhelmed with the Lord's goodness—we sing it even now, and we sing it every day that we live. It is a glad refrain that will take us all the way home. And there again, in a better place with a better voice, we’ll sing together: ‘How Great, how great, Thou Art’!

2

The Blank Page

Sometimes when you begin a study or writing, you meditate a while, then look down and see that all you have is a blank page. I always told my writing students that the scariest thing for a writer may be staring at that blank page. We’ve heard of that, even with the best of writers.

But coming to it as a blank page is how we began these particular contemplations on the great gospel hymn. At the start, I wrote to the daughters of one of my best friends Ryan Howell from Birmingham. Ryan lost his battle with a number of setbacks and left us far too early just a few years ago. I sent a picture of that first page with the title alone inscribed in handwriting at the top, ‘How Great Thou Art.’ Nothing more. I knew I might write more, I’m sure, but the words would have to come on their own time.

Fortunately, the words did come; and we are now re-sharing the thoughts that came to us as we reflected on the good life of a great Christian man and a tremendous singer, a natural tenor. As with any writing, the early pages of the essay consisted of more ‘musings’ than anything. But it wasn’t long before I knew the best place to start delving into the power of God: the book of Psalms. Opening up that great book, I paused at several places, able to admire a number of thoughts along the way, thoughts of the wonder of God:

“The Lord knows the way of the righteous,” writes the psalmist regarding the omniscience of God. Psalm 1:6.

Then again:

“I have set my king upon the holy hill of Zion,” says the writer—Psalm 2:6–admiring from afar the glories of Zion, a place of glory not only for the kingdom of Judah but for the coming church of Christ about a millennium just ahead.

We could not help but pause next at the classic eighth psalm:

“O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! Who hast set thy glory above the heavens … When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him.” Psalm 8:1, 3-4.

At the end of the psalmist’s reflections, he ends just as he had begun:

“O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!”–the opening and the closing serving as bookends that glorify the Lord.

True, the Lord is the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega.

What a glad refrain the psalmist’s bookends make:

“O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name!’

An anthem for each day.

 No greater words and no greater life mission could we declare than these. The psalmist is overwhelmed with God’s excellence much as the song poet who comes to a climatic moment in his song and probably in his life: “Then sing my soul, my Savior God to Thee, How great thou art!”

I guess it’s appropriate: We can’t complete these reflections in only a sitting or two. Some things take more time. Some even take a lifetime. “How Great Thou Art” is one of ‘em.

3

The Heavens' Sermon

Few things proclaim God’s greatness more than the glory of the heavens.

And few writings, if any, describe that glory more eloquently than Psalm 19—all in four short verses.

1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.

3 They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.

4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens, God has pitched a tent for the sun.

The psalmist’s description lines up with the songwriter’s: “When thru the woods and forest glades I wander”—writes Carl Bobert—“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—Then sings my soul …!

You can almost see the writer with a pen in his hand and a blank sheet of paper, soaking in the beauty of nature’s presence so he can put it on the page. Perhaps open before him, too, is the nineteenth psalm.

The psalmist chooses to personify the heavens, portraying them as stepping forth each day and each night to make a great announcement: The Lord is majestic, and His glory extends far beyond what our eyes can behold. His glory is as vast, unfathomable, infinite, and boundless as the heavens themselves, and even more.

He frames the heavens as if they are stacked one on top of the other—the moon, planets, stars, and sun—stacked in order, for they have all been "ordained" by God Himself (Ps. 8). The “firmament” (KJV) is so very vast in its expanse and spread out like a tent for the sun, moon, and stars to dwell in. They are not haphazard, random—no, they are “firm,” fixed, the work of God’s fingers, knit together in unison like a woman knitting a quilt that would cover the sky.

This glory we see in the daylight as the sun takes over the entire expanse, and we see it still when the sun hands the baton each evening to the nighttime for the moon and stars to rule—no, not just rule, to proclaim with all they have of God’s greatness and majesty.   

We will always do well to begin our days as the songwriter does, and the psalmist, taking in all the sights and sounds of the heavens, even though its speech is quiet and its seamless message is in its beauty alone.

Every day is a blank page, and we stroll through the day, and the night, adding the words and lessons from the heavens and nature to describe a glory that we can only feel when we dig deep down in our souls.

And, then, as I searched for the right words to try to describe the indescribable, I came upon this next sentence. I’ve said often that perhaps one of my friends could read this sentence when they come together one day when my own course has run its course, just as the sun does in the evening. Here’s that sentence, perhaps the longest I’ve ever written:

We walk through the woods and forest glades, we listen to the birds singing in the trees, we look out over the lofty mountains, we listen to the of the humming of the creek in the woods, we look up at the heavens that declare God’s glory abundantly, we examine the stars and the galaxies and the constellations—and by the time our day and night are done, we have a novel complete, filled with God’s glories, read over and over, declared to all who will listen, expressed in prayer and praise, and stored down  in our souls, so much so that we can look up once more before the baton is passed from the night to the day, or the day to the night, and sing, “Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee”—a day and a night—a life!—well spent.

4

The Refrain of  ‘75

In our sharing of Crossing the Georgia Line, we began to see how many of the sights and scenes took on an entity of their own—the Chattahoochee River, Mud Creek, a vacant lot, a house on an Alabama hill, the multicolored downtown LaGrange fountain, a road well-traveled, and on and on. These all become more than places—they become personalities, each with its own aura.

The songs in the story also do the same—they step up as characters themselves and become part of the world of the summer of ’73. I haven’t counted how many are in the telling of the story—I’d guess as many as fifty, ranging from “Delta Dawn” to “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

“How Great Thou Art” also finds its way in the story. Perhaps that is where the song first became part of a young man’s soul, not just a piece of music.

I remember when the Statler Brothers came out with their version of the song in the 70s. It was one of the few religious hymns that I can think of that made the charts and played daily on radio stations. Kristofferson’s “Why Me” and Willie’s “Unclouded Day” are two others that come to mind.

I was in my early years of bricklaying in Houston when the Statlers’ song came out, and I remember hearing it play while out working. I don’t know if I could’ve afforded to stop and listen, but I am sure I paused and smiled within. I put a pin in that moment.

It was in 1969 when they first recorded it on a gospel album, but then they re-recorded it in 1975. (Hold onto that date a bit.) By 1976 it had become a country music hit and made it to number thirty-nine on the charts, etching its way day by day and chord by chord into the country’s consciousness. Imagine the impact the song had on the workers in America, laboring hard to make a living when the unmatched harmony of “How Great Thou Art” would come across the airwaves in the middle of the day.

I was in my early years of my bricklaying apprenticeship at that time, trying to find myself out on the job with a number of masonry companies. I had finished a three-week union bricklaying school in June of 1975, but jobs were tight, and I was unable to find a bricklaying job with the union. So, I went to work with a non-union company called “Team Incorporated.” It was a big company that my big brother—known as “Squatlow”—worked at. I spent about six months with Team.

A time or two we’d be between jobs, and I’d go to work as an apprentice with another company. I remember one such company, and it sticks in my mind that the song came on in the short time I was with it. It wasn’t necessarily a particularly good experience—in fact, it was the only company that I ever remember that failed to pay me what they owed, and the company kind of disappeared. I forgave that long ago.

I suppose it was appropriate that in some hard times like that and in those growing times “How Great Thou Art” was playing in my consciousness—sung by my family’s favorite group.

It was also during that period that the amazin’ blonde and I would go every year to the Astrodome for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. All the big music stars would come and sing at the night sessions. We saw Charlie Pride, B.J. Thomas, and even Elvis one year—that may have been our first year of marriage—and, of course, we saw the Statler Brothers.

Near the end of their performance each time we saw them, they would sing “How Great Thou Art.” They would sing two verses and the chorus, then after the last chorus the high tenor would jump into the lead—and jump back to the beginning of the chorus again. It was Lew DeWitt at first with his unique tenor harmony, then later Jimmy Fortune after Lew had serious health issues and had to retire. We were blessed to hear both.

After repeating the chorus and ending with a powerful crescendo, the lights would go out, the crowd would applaud, and then a moment of silence. Then, in a flash—literally—the lights would come back on and the boys would hit that chorus one more time, Lew or Jimmy leading it just as before. They would end again with what I think may be the most spine-chilling ending I had ever heard—the lights on … the tenor stepping in at the top of the chorus and stepping up the ladder to the tip top … the other three harmonizing flawlessly into a crescendo that built until the final note, which they seemed to hold for an eternity.

I can feel every bit of that Astrodome memory down in my soul right now this moment, fifty years later. All I can say is, “Then sings my soul”! Both then and now.

I mentioned that it was in 1975 that the Statlers’ version hit the country charts and made its way into the soul of America. It was a special year for the amazin’ blonde, too. We began our own refrain that year—October 24, 1975.

5

Who Said a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words?

When we explore the depths of God’s greatness, there is no shortage of scriptures and stories that affirm the great truth over and over. The psalmist David pauses himself many times as he considers all the Lord in His bountiful goodness has done for him. Of all those places, few passages surpass Psalm 139.

Ah, the powerful words! Listen:

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.”

I’ve often thought that few words or thoughts in the human language compare to this declaration of praise. From the first utterance—

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me!”—

We stand amazed at the beauty and grandeur of those thoughts. We wonder even more when we come to the end of the psalm and David prays an almost unimaginable prayer: “Lord,” he says, “search me and know me.” Few of us are bold enough to pray such a prayer. Hold onto that thought for a few weeks.

While meditating on the power of words, I ran across a speech by Paul Harvey in his final dissertation to a large committee of journalists. At one point in his speech, he makes a curious point.

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, he says, but then he adds—

“But can anyone tell me what the author of the quotation looks like?”

Naturally, no one could—yet those words have lived for hundreds of years. Sometimes words overwhelm even the best of pictures.

Of course, Mr. Harvey proves his point with the most eloquent words of his own. He looks back through the years to the thousands of pictures he has drawn in the minds of listeners in all of his newscasts and “The Rest of the Story” series. It’s beautiful watching him draw vivid pictures without even one stroke from a paintbrush other than the brush of words:

“You trust me to paint pictures on the mirror of your mind,” he says in his classic Paul Harvey voice, “and I will let you feel such agony … and ecstasy … such misery and such magnificence as you would never be able to feel by looking at it.”

Very true. How a writer or speaker can create every emotion imaginable in his listeners—agony, ecstasy, misery—and thoughts of grandeur, too.

The Holy Spirit trusts David to do this very thing in the one-hundred-thirty-ninth psalm. He paints a picture of the Lord’s grandeur and greatness on the mirror of readers’ minds for centuries.

He begins with this—

“Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways …”

Painting pictures on the mirror of our minds with just a few words—it truly is a beautiful thing! ~ 9-28-26

6

A Majestic Crescendo

I’ve been thinking this week, "How far do I go in exploring God’s greatness?"

I think I knew the answer to that question already, but as soon as I penned those words it kind of fell out of the sky—just in case I’d missed it, I guess. You talk of God’s greatness as long as His greatness shall last—which, of course, is forever.

Heaven will do the same, singing His praises and the Lamb’s through all of eternity.

The psalmist sat in a similar place as I’ve sat lately, pen in hand. Our design is the same: to describe God’s greatness in the best words we can reach down and retrieve and to paint the picture as well as our human tongue can tell or pen can write.

Because God is like a prism, he zeros on the different aspects of God’s glory one by one in this, his one-hundredth and thirty-nine psalm: He consider the Lord’s omniscience. God, he declares, knows all things, without exception or qualification.

But a prism—as best I remember from grammar school—bends light to a specific point. David does the same. Of all the things the Lord knows, one thing I know He knows especially well, says the psalmist: me—“You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.”

I can’t help but want to italicize the me in that opening line. I know you know everything and everybody, but one thing that I want to focus on here, Lord, is how you know me.

Talk about a moment when you need to say, “Let me sit down a minute.” That’s it.

We know ourselves, at least to some degree. The Lord knows us better. That’s hard to fathom.

We search ourselves sometimes (not nearly enough, I’m sure), but the Lord Himself has searched us; and when He searches, unlike us, He leaves no corner unexamined.

David continues with his prism of words designed to explore the depth of God’s knowledge. The light he sheds is earthshattering.

From his opening anthem of praise, he lays one thought upon another, so that, one by one, each building on the previous, he builds his words into a majestic crescendo.

It reminds me of how we sing the song that serves here as our great theme. We begin from the depths of our hearts declaring how impactful the signs around us are on our lives:

“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds thy hands have made. We see the stars, we hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed.”

Those reflections triumph into a rare anthem of praise in the chorus, building and building until the last words are a thundering of voices raised as high as the sky singing, “How Great Thou Art.”

It's amazing how words fail to describe such a song. Fortunately, all of you can hear the song in your mind right now, and you understand the tremendous crescendo in the chorus.

Then we press a little further: Our hope is that we can build just such a crescendo of praise in our own lives, day by day and hour by hour, that demonstrates the Lord’s glory.

Our song, you see, is our life ~ stevenraybowen-writer@outlook.com

(Part 7 next week)