The rich, rock-solid words of great hymns can encourage your heart and point your family toward Jesus. Learn to incorporate hymns of the faith into your family occasions and sing the hope of Christ!
Learn more about Joni's book: Timeless Hymns for Family Worship
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada, and there’s a hymn for every occasion.
Hymns of the faith were the thread that tightly stitched together the patchwork quilt of my childhood. My father and mother knew many hymns, and because they both enjoyed singing, my sisters and I would listen to our parents, and well, we would just chime in – especially if we wanted to keep up with things. We grew up on a farm, and so in the summer months when my sisters and I would help Daddy cut, bail, and stack hay in the barn, we’d sing, “Bringing in the Sheaves, bringing in the sheaves, we shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.” And that became a family anthem every summertime. Or, when we would all go on a hike, it was “We’re marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion, we’re marching up to Zion, the beautiful city of God.”
Every occasion was memorialized with a hymn on birthdays. We’d honor one another with a rendition of that person's favorite. For my mother, it was “living for Jesus, a life that is true, trying to please him in all that I do.” And to this day, the words of that old hymn are synonymous with Lindy Eareckson. Because all of us in the family could sing different parts, we’d sing in the car on road trips: “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins,” and “Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy praise.” Hymns like that provided great four-part harmony. And after the diving accident in which I became paralyzed, hospital visits with my mom and dad became hymn sings around the bed. Our family was all in shock, knowing that my quadriplegia was permanent. What else could we do but sing, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”
I felt a kind of “safety” when singing hymns with my family. Unlike singing popular songs with them – you know, sometimes my mother's favorites from the 40s – the biblical metaphors and references in hymns bound me tightly to the hearts of my parents and my sisters. Harmonizing on a doctrine-rich hymn gave us a common bond in the God of the Bible, as well as a chance to celebrate that bond through beautiful harmony. Hymns enriched our family culture, and they provided a fertile soil for my faith in Christ to grow. ’Cause after my accident, I had something to fall back on; something that was ingrained in my heart and memory; something that felt good – felt like family.
Even when I collapsed into a depressing brain fog, at night I would fight back tears by whisper-singing hymns whose words I had memorized through my childhood. And the stanzas were an anchor for vacillating emotions: “Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.” Or “Here's my heart, O take and seal it; seal it for thy courts above.” The rock-solid words kept me anchored, and whenever I would feel my emotions taking me down a dark path.
Hey, learn to mark your family occasions with a hymn of the faith. I’ve written a great new book called “Timeless Hymns for Family Worship,”and find out more about it at joniradio.org. Again, that’s joniradio.org where we love sharing and singing the hope of Christ through every hardship.
© Joni and Friends