Your Favorite Hymn, Please

 

A couple of years ago, I asked people to tell me their favorite hymn and then those hymns were used as the Sunday’s Hymn until the favorites list ran out, which took several months, as I recall. I’d like to do that again, first of all, because it was a whole lot of fun, and secondly, because it saves me a whole lot of work.

 

In the next few weeks, youngest son will graduating, youngest daughter will be moving out, oldest daughter will be moving in, plus there are all the other more regular year-end activities to attend to, and if I’ve ever needed help keeping the blog going, it’s right now. So help me out here, okay? Tell me one of your loved hymns in the comments to this post, and I’ll feature it in one of my upcoming Sunday’s Hymn posts. While you’re at it, tell me a little bit about why you like the hymn you’ve chosen.

 

If you participated in my previous call for favorite hymns, please participate in this one, too. If you like more than one hymn, give me another of your favorites, but if you are one of those one-hymn wonders (and I know a couple of those in real life) then I will allow you to nominate the same hymn again, although I might add you to my list of most boring people on the face of the earth at the same time.

 

If you have a blog, I’ll link back to you when I feature your hymn. If you don’t have a blog, consider this your chance to get some of the glory of blogging without any of the pain.

Random Playlist Meme

Summers are short here, and once the snow goes, we have about 2 weeks to clean up the yard , fertilize it, till the garden, and plant the vegetables and flowers. I have a big yard and a big garden, so I’ve been a busy person. That means the blog has been neglected a bit and it may continue to be neglected for at little while.

But here’s a little meme I do have time for. I copied this from my friend Scott at Magic Statistics. Here are the instructions:

Get your ipod or media-player of choice, select your whole music collection, set the thing to shuffle (i.e., randomized playback), then post the first ten songs that come out. No cheating, no matter how stupid it makes you feel!

It’s pretty difficult to embarrass me, so I’m game to play the playlist game:

1. A Song for You by Whiskeytown from Return of the Grievous Angel: Tribute to Gram Parsons
2. Just One Time by Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler from Neck and Neck
3. Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues by Jim Croce from 50th Anniversary Collection
   
4. Blue Skies by Willie Nelson from Stardust
5. Morning Ride by Mark Knopler from Screenplaying
6. Canon for 3 violins and basso continuo in D minor by the English Concert from The #1 Baroque Album
7. Mama Told Me (Not to Come) by Three Dog Night from The Best of Three Dog Night.
8. How Deep the Father’s Love by John McDermott from Great is Thy Faithfulness
9. Myers: Cavatina by Norbert Kraft from Guitar Favorites
10. Don’t Stop by Fleetwood Mac from Rumours

If you’ve got an iPod and a playlist, why don’t you play along, too? 

Update on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 7:13PM by rebecca

Juanita plays along, with a list that includes a few things piratish.

Update on Thursday, May 24, 2007 at 11:57AM by rebecca

And now the two Kims:

• Kim in ON
  
• Kim of Hiraeth
  

Update on Friday, May 25, 2007 at 7:58PM by rebecca

 Warren has also joined in.

Purposes of Christ's Death: Galatians 4:4-5

This is another reposting from a series of posts examining the statements of purpose that scripture gives us regarding the death of Christ. You can find the other posts from this series by clicking on the purposes of Christ’s death label at the end of this post.

Galatians 4:4-5 is the text where we find this post’s explicit statement of a purpose for Christ’s death.

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. (NASB)

I had planned to include these verses together with the text from Hebrews 9:15, since the purpose statements are similar. That scripture had to do with Christ’s “redemption of the transgressions that were {committed} under the first covenant, [so that] those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.” Since inheritance and sonship are such related things, these statements are very much alike. The post on Hebrews 9:15 was long enough as it was, however, and in order to look just a little bit at some of the unique things in this passage, I’ve given it it’s own post.

The purpose statement in this text is “so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” Once again you have Christ’s death redeeming people from something that comes along with being under the Law, or the Old Covenant. The phrase “when the fullness of time came” lets us know that in this text we are looking at things in a historical context. The verses before this one tells us that under the law, people were like minor children, and being a child was a kind of bondage because a child had to remain under supervision. But at the right historical time Christ came and bought people out from under the guardianship of the law, and gave them the position of fulfledged adopted adult sons with legal rights to an inheritance. It seems that when the word adoption is used here in this context, it refers to this legal right of sonship.

And if we read the verses following, we see that because we are sons, “God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into [our] hearts, crying, “Abba, Father’!” Because of the Spirit within us, we approach God as our own father. We are no longer like minor children or slaves, but adopted sons, “and if a son, then an heir.” Since in the historical cultural setting, inheritance came through sonship, then in Christ, we are all—both men and women—sons of God in that we are both heirs.

One of the purposes of Christ’s death is so that we would be adopted sons of God.