Comfort Music

Recently our church has been making more of an effort to sing some of the old hymns during praise and worship.  I'm loving it.  Seriously, I've really been enjoying it.  Our band gives an upbeat feeling to them while still being extremely praiseworthy.  I love how the instruments and voices blend together so beautifully.  Not like the funeral dirge-like music Shawn remembers from his Southern Baptist upbringing.  My church was a little different: Catholic.  We were unusually rather upbeat for a Catholic church, but still had some dirge-like moments too.  Right now you might be wondering how a Catholic and a Baptist who were married in an Episcopal church managed to meet in the middle, but that's another post! 

I love the contemporary Christian music, but I realized what a shame it is my children aren't growing up with these old hymns.  It's important to me that they learn these songs too:  Amazing Grace, The Old Rugged Cross, How Great Thou Art, I Need Thee Every Hour, Great is Thy Faithfulness, Blessed Assurance, Fairest Lord Jesus--you get the idea.  I have some fond memories of some of the songs we used to sing at church and listen to at home.  One album in particular I remember all the way back to before kindergarten.  It was called Earthen Vessels and I remember listening to it on our cross-country trip when we were transferred from CO to VA.  Back then, cars didn't have cassette players (we also walked uphill in the snow without shoes both ways), so we had a one of our own, but it didn't switch sides automatically.  My sister, being six years older, was in charge of switching the tape. The cat we were traveling with wasn't a happy traveler.  Sunshine howled the entire time unless she was tranquilized.  The Earthen Vessels tape also seemed to help keep her calm.  I remember my mother telling my sister, "Quick!  Flip it before she wakes up!"

Anyway, my quest has begun to find some of the old hymns and songs I used to sing at church so we can start listening to them at home.  These songs are important parts of our Christian history/heritage and I don't want my kids missing out.  My husband thinks I'm nuts, but that's normal.  The other day I happily shopped for new music, finally settling on three CDs with contemporary singers singing old hymns.  I also started downloading more from iTunes, even finding Earthen Vessels on there!  They are all now on a playlist on my phone so the boys and I can listen to them at home, in the car or anywhere else.

1 Chronicles 16:9
Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.