How great thou art.

I climbed into bed this evening and for some strange reason began thinking about a hymn Elvis Presley sang in the late 1960′s entitled “How Great Thou Art” (originally written by Carl Boberg); it was on one of his albums my parents were fond of listening to when I was a boy .

I always thought that song was about painting when I was a kid.  Then, in the late 1980′s, I started going to church, became enlightened, learned how to speak “Old King Jamesian” english and finally understood that the words were praising God.  ”That’s nice”, I recall thinking.  I never did learn the rest of the words…until now.

The whole song is an amazing rendition of the gospel, but this verse stands out to me:

And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin:

If you are anything like me you might flip over those words quite quickly and think, “That’s nice”.  If you do, I encourage to re-read it and consider them more carefully.

I’ll re-write this verse as I hear it in my head:

And when I think that God did not spare his only son,
but instead sent Him to die for me – I can hardly believe it;
Gladly, he allowed himself to be nailed to a cross, dying a horrible death in my place,
So that I could live and be blameless before his Father:

How great you are.