Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Dear Friends:

Your statutes have been my songs
wherever I make my home.
Ps 119:54 (NRSV)

It is noon on a busy Friday. I am participating in a “compliance matters” telephone conference with two of my colleagues at the Loma Linda University Medical Center where I serve as the General Counsel. On the line with me are Beth Elwell, the Executive Director of Corporate Compliance, and Kerry Heinrich, who serves as the Compliance Counsel.

We are talking about pressing matters of healthcare regulation and the issues that can arise in a major teaching hospital with over 7,000 employees. This is stressful work, but we have been a team for many years and are as much brothers and sister as we are co-workers.

Kerry takes a break to call his office on his cell phone to set up an appointment. To pass the time, I quiz Beth, “These words are found in what hymn:

In season’s of distress and grief
My soul has often found relief
and oft escaped the tempter’s snare. . . .

“Oh I should know that,” Beth says. “I’ve heard it before.”

Kerry comes back on the line and I repeat the lines. He says them over and then began to hums the correct tune. “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” he says.

“That’s right,” I say. “How about this one, my favorite line in a hymn ever:

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked come to Thee for dress,
Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly,
Wash me Savior, or I die.”

“Oh, oh, oh” says Kerry, “I think I know that one. I repeat the words. They both try but can’t guess it.

“Rock of Ages,” I say, adding, “but in fairness that verse is dropped out of some modern hymnals.”

“Try to guess this one,

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts above.”

Beth says, “I know that I have heard that one. If I could actually carry a tune, I would get it.”

Kerry is humming the old traditional American melody until his mind caught the words up to the music. “You’ve got it,” I say. “Good job.”

I just can’t think of the title,” He says.

“Well, here’s a hint. The title is in the very first line of the song. The next lines are:

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above;
Praise His name–I’m fixed upon it–
Name of God’s redeeming love.

“Another verse starts, ‘Here I raise my Ebenezer,’ except few people get that reference anymore and new hymnals leave it out. ‘Ebenezer’ means ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us.’It’s what Samuel called a rock he set up for a testimony for the Israelites at Mizpah to commemorate a victory over invading Philistines (1 Sam 7:12).”

From out of his heart, Kerry is singing the words with me in his rich baritone. “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” he says.

“Correct! I say. “It’s a great song. It often goes through my head in the morning when I wake up.

“So how about this one:

The vilest offender who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.”

Kerry is singing and even pulling Beth along with him before I finish saying the second line. “To God Be the Glory,” he says.

“That’s right.”

For the next 15 minutes we exchange lines and memories. Snatches of “My Faith Looks Up To Thee,” “Near the Cross,” “Just As I Am,” “The Love of God,” “What A Friend We Have In Jesus,” and “In My Heart There Rings a Melody” are said, hummed and parsed.

I toss out the last line to be guessed:

Lift high His royal banner,
It must not suffer loss. . .

Neither Beth or Kerry can think of it. “The melody sounds a lot like the fight song of Kerry’s law school alma mater,” I tell them. It’s “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.”

We move back to business and finish. I feel refreshed, reconnected to life and love somehow. Vibrant faith has blossomed amidst consideration of federal regulations like a yellow dandelion takes its defiant stand in a crack in the sidewalk.

Later in the afternoon, word comes that a business acquaintance and life-long friend of Kerry’s has died. I call him to tell him and give my condolences. He’s already heard. We discuss the news a bit. Then Kerry says, “I’ve been thinking about our hymn session today. That really meant a lot to me. It was special.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking about it too. You know, the amazing thing is, what academic medical center in the whole world would find the General Counsel, Compliance Counsel, and the Executive Director of Corporate Compliance singing hymns and talking about Jesus in the middle of a teleconference. We are really blessed.”

“We are blessed, Kerry says. “I am grateful.”

We are silent a moment in respect for the blessing. Then I say, “Being sundown and with Rob passing away today, I’m thinking of another hymn. This one has my favorite name for God ever. It’s this:

While the deepening shadows fall,
Heart of Love, enfolding all
Thro’ the glory and the grace
Of the stars that veil Thy face,
Our hearts ascend.

Kerry says, “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do,” I say. “I bet your family’s sung that song at sundown worship your whole life.

“Oh, ‘Day is Dying in the West.’We do sing that every week, always have, only we sing this verse:

When forever from our sight
Pass the stars, the day, the night,
Lord of angels, on our eyes
Let eternal morning rise
And shadows end.

“You know, Kerry, my family has sung that song all over the world. I even sang it to my self at sundown in Kabul, Afghanistan. Always the first verse and then the third verse about the “Heart of Love” enfolding all.”

“It’s the same for us,” Kerry says, “only we sing the first and the last verse.”

We sign off, two men in middle-age, engaged in a profession that most people think is far from singing spiritual songs.

The next week I talk to Beth. She’s had the same blessing from our impromptu “Name that Hymn Tune” game and has talked to her running companion about it. She says her friend was surprised that such a session would happen in the work place.

Beth, Kerry and I were all children of Christian families. We grew up singing those hymns in worship at home and church and at school. Our parents all made the time, effort and financial sacrifice to see that we learned the songs of our faith. Those songs form a deep bond between us as adults, reminders that we are joined together in the body of Christ. We are passing the same blessing on to our children.

The Psalmist wrote, “Your statutes have been my song wherever I make my home” (Ps 119:54). God lives for us and we worship him wherever we are in the remembered words and music of these hymns. This is what Jesus was talking about when he told the woman at the well, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. . . the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth (Jn 4:21-24).

The great old preacher, A.W. Tozer wrote that after the Bible, the most valuable book for learning theology is a hymnal. “For a variety of reasons, many have tossed the hymnbook aside or at least have ignored it. It has been a successful ploy of the enemy to separate us from those lofty souls who reveled in the rarified atmosphere of God’s presence. I suggest you find a hymnbook and learn how to use it” (The Purpose of Man, [Ventura California: Regal Books, 2009], p. 182).

Jessye Norman, the American operatic diva, probably came closest to my feelings after the session with Kerry and Beth when she described singing her favorite third verse of “Amazing Grace” to journalist Bill Moyers, you know, the one that goes:

Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
“Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

“There’s such a wonderful calm I feel when I sing it–an uncomplicated feeling as one felt as a child. There’s such hope at the end. I’ve gotten this far because of grace and the same thing that has brought me safe this far will carry me the rest of the way” (Quoted by Bill Henderson in Simple Gifts [New York: Free Press], p. 84).

I can never try to slip the lyrics of “Amazing Grace” past Kerry and Beth, because we all know them so well, but that’s the point. We share the words, and much more than that we share the truth of God that runs as a steady and powerful current in our hearts sweeping us closer to him.

There are parents who doubt the value of family worship, of music lessons, and the extra trips for band and choir practice. The cost of a Christian education can seem like an unnecessary luxury, especially in hard times like these. Each family has to decide for themselves, based on their faith, their resources and their priorities. But I tell you this, on a Friday afternoon, decades later, a compliance director and two attorneys paused spontaneously in the middle of a business meeting to worship Jesus Christ with the remembered songs of Zion. If we’d wanted to do so, we could have called up administrators, administrative assistants, accountants, HR analysts, physicians, nurses and technicians to join us because they know the same hymns and the message they carry, learned the same way we learned them. What price can you place on Eternity as a living, breathing, singing 24-hour, 7-day a week reality?

It is popular these days for Christian schools and colleges to develop and promote academic excellence and this is as it should be. Whatever is done in the name of Christ should be done well. Our first call to witness is to serve with excellence. However, let there be no mistake about it, the value-added benefit of Christian education is the saving, empowering knowledge of the Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ who he sent” (Jn 17:3).

To sing about our God even while serving him in the world is the life of worship to which we are called.You will never find the Gospel mission growing inanimate bricks and mortar, cutting-edge technology, bigger parking lots, church membership rolls, financial statements or marketing and fundraising programs. You will find it growing only in the hearts of men and women where it has been planted and nurtured as the truth that makes the difference in everything else. “Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, let the people rejoice.”

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps. 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books,Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals.Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.

Kent and his beloved Patricia are enjoying their 31st year of marriage. They are the proud parents of Andrew, a college student.