Hymns for Lent VII: Christ the Lord Is Risen Today

[NOTE: The seventh in a series of seven blog posts on Lent. The full series is available here. Enjoy!]

On this Easter Sunday, we turn our eyes from the tragedy of the cross to the glorious victory of the empty tomb by examining one of the best known Easter hymns--or one of the hymns most associated with the celebration of Easter Sunday:  Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.  The full version clocks in at ten stanzas, the first seven of which are attributed to Charles Wesley.  The last three were borrowed from a similar 14th century hymn called 'Jesus Christ Is Risen Today'.  These days, it's fairly common for churches to truncate the hymn down to about four or five verses

Hymns for Lent VI: Rock of Ages

[NOTE: The sixth in a series of seven blog posts on Lent. The full series is available here. Enjoy!]

Appropriately enough, this will be our final meditation on Good Friday before moving on to celebrate the resurrection.  Written by Anglican cleric Augustus Toplady, this well-known hymn was inspired by a fissure in a gorge where Toplady found shelter during a storm.  This fissure (or the one where folks believe Toplady hid, at any rate) is now marked as the 'Rock of Ages' and can be visited by tourists.

Hymns for Lent V: Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted

[NOTE: The fifth in a series of seven blog posts on Lent. The full series is available here. Enjoy!]

It's Maundy Thursday now, and Holy Week is well under way.  We continue our meditation on Good Friday with the rather directly titled 'Smitten, Stricken, and Afflicted,' by Thomas Kelly.

Hymns for Lent IV: Beneath the Cross of Jesus

[NOTE: The fourth in a series of seven blog posts on Lent. The full series is available here. Enjoy!]

Continuing the theme of meditating on the events of Good Friday, we turn to a well known and much-beloved hymn:  'Beneath the Cross of Jesus,' written by Elizabeth Clephane shortly before her death.  As noted by the editor of the magazine where the hymn was first printed (after Clephane's death), 'These lines ex­press the ex­per­i­enc­es, the hopes and the long­ings of a young Christ­ian late­ly re­leased. Writ­ten on the ve­ry edge of life, with the bet­ter land ful­ly in view of faith, they seem to us foot­steps print­ed on the sands of time, where these sands touch the ocean of Etern­i­ty. These foot­prints of one whom the Good Shep­herd led through the wild­er­ness in­to rest, may, with God’s blessing, con­trib­ute to com­fort and di­rect suc­ceed­ing pilgrims.'

Amen.

Hymns for Lent III: Ah, Holy Jesus

[NOTE: The third in a series of seven blog posts on Lent. The full series is available here. Enjoy!]

Having contemplated Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday, we now move on to Good Friday and the crucifixion itself with the hymn 'Ah, Holy Jesus', or as it is known in the original German, 'Herzliebster Jesu'.  What better way to start off Holy Week?

Hymns for Lent II: Go to Dark Gethsemane

[NOTE: The second in a series of seven blog posts on Lent. The full series is available here. Enjoy!]

Maundy Thursday is pretty much the only big Holy Week day, other than Holy Saturday, that doesn't get much in the way of an official observation.  We have church services on Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, of course, and lots of churches have some sort of church service or gathering for Good Friday, but Maundy Thursday services are fairly rare in the Protestant denominations (though they're increasing in popularity for some reason).  But the events of Good Friday--Christ's sacrificial death on the cross--really start on Thursday night, in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Hymns for Lent I: Ride on, Ride on in Majesty

INTRODUCTORY NOTE:  In the weeks before Christmas, I blogged through several of my favorite (fairly) well known Christmas carols.  It was a very helpful, and a great reminder of the true meaning of Christmas.  I've decided to do something similar for Lent--just seven this time, not twelve.  It will be a bit tricky, since it's hard to find hymns that meditate on Christ's suffering without moving on to celebrate His resurrection.  But then, perhaps that is for the best, since He is risen.  Anyway, here goes.

Traditionally speaking, Lent is a time of somber meditation and self-denial. During this season we remember the temptation of Jesus Christ and his eventual death on the cross. The culmination of Lent is Holy Week--the week leading up to Easter. (An excellent timeline of the Holy Week is available here.)  It's easy to skip ahead to Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and we'll be talking a lot about the events of those days in this series. But Holy Week doesn't start in Gethsemane. It starts on the Sunday before, on the road into Jerusalem.  Which is where our first hymn starts off.