First Corinthians 12:11 says, "All these [gifts] are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills" (ESV, insertion and emphasis mine). GOD the Holy Spirit sovereignly apportions gifts. It was in His sovereign rule why I often don't hit notes when I sing. It was in His sovereign rule why I have more fingers than the chords I can play without looking at a guitar chord chart. It was in His sovereign rule why I am unsure if I write a quarter rest correctly. I do not have the gift of music -- I do not do well with music. And GOD has prepared me for some other work.

However, as a pastor, I believe GOD has put in my heart a desire to guide the church into a congregational singing with GOD-centered, Christ-treasuring, Spirit-filled, Scripture-saturated songs. I have this longing to pen Biblically rich statements following music metrical indexes and use tunes of known hymns with such meters. May the grace of GOD enable me to do so. But for now, let us do a simple honing by trans-tuning the much admired modern day hymn In Christ Alone to a hymn-exposition of Psalm 23, He Leadeth Me. 



For the tune of He Leadeth Me...
 
But, of course, nothing beats the original arrangement...

The music sheet as how Getty and Townend wrote it is available for download and its free from Getty Music.

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Well, I love hymns. I love these God-glorifying, Christ-centered, Spirit-filled, Bible-saturated hymns. I love how they are packed with valuable doctrinal truths expressed in rhymes and poetry. I love how they are designed for congregational worship. I love how they transcend from generations to generations but remain fresh in their message.

And another admirable attribute of hymns is that they are written with a structured metric system. This means that a hymn can be sung even when the tune is unfamiliar as long as the hymn is of the same meter with a familiar tune.

When I was still unaware of this structure, I slightly deject when I browse a hymnal and glance at the great words of hymns like Richard Baxter's "Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care" or the Calvinist-appealing "I Sought the Lord" simply because I cannot sing them due to my ignorance of their tune. Such a grace from God that hymns have meters and that I was instructed of such metric system.

We can take as an example a grandly Theocentric hymn "Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise." Although I do not really know its original tune, the hymnal says it is of meter 11 11.11 11 which is the same meter for the Christmas hymn "Away in a Manger." We can therefore take the words of the former hymn and sing it to the tune of the latter one. And here it goes...


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