We’ve just left a season of Advent Hymns, with nearly a week of Christmas hymns to enjoy. But what about New Year’s Hymns?
We can start with a collection of New Year’s Hymns (1749) by Charles Wesley. They are filled with energy and reflect a mid-18th-century movement joined by English Moravians to enhance worship services for January 1. Indeed, Wesley’s journal from 1748 describes a 4 a.m. service on New Year’s Day filled with “joy and thanksgiving.”
Imagine if we, today, were to attend a pre-dawn service on New Year’s Day! What would we be singing? We could start with Wesley’s poems.
Yes poems. Because hymns first and foremost are poems constructed with the metrical and strophic nature of hymn tunes in mind. Wesley’s collection includes seven fine ones, each appropriate for the beginning of a new year.
The fifth poem seemed particularly inspiring to me:
Come, let us anew
Our journey pursue,
Roll round with the year,
And never stand still ‘til the Master appear.
His adorable will
Let us gladly fulfill,
And our talents improve
By the patience of hope, and the labour of love.Our life is a dream,
Our time as a stream
Glides swiftly away,
And the fugitive moment refuses to stay.
The arrow is flown,
The moment is gone.
The millennial year
Rushes on to our view, and eternity’s here!O that each in the day
Of his coming might say
“I have fought my way through,
I have finished the work thou didst give me to do!”
O that each from his Lord
May receive the glad word
“Well and faithfully done,
Enter into my joy, and sit down on my throne!”
All best wishes to each of you on New Year’s Day 2013. May we “never stand still” as we ardently seek his “adorable will.”
