Welcome to the “Front-Porch.”
The blank page.
Sometimes when you begin a study or writing, you meditate a while, then look down and see that all you have is a blank page.
I always told my writing students that the scariest thing for a writer may be staring at that blank page. We’ve heard of that, even with the best of writers.
But coming to it as a blank page is how we began these particular contemplations on the great gospel hymn.
At the start, I wrote to the daughters of one of my best friends, Ryan Howell from Birmingham. Ryan lost his battle with a number of setbacks and left us far too early just a few years ago.
I sent a picture of that first page with the title alone inscribed in handwriting at the top, ‘How Great Thou Art.’ Nothing more. I knew I might write more, I’m sure, but the words would have to come on their own time.
Fortunately, the words did come; and we are now re-sharing the thoughts that came to us as we reflected on the good life of a great Christian man and a tremendous singer, a natural tenor. As with any writing, the early pages of the essay consisted of more ‘musings’ than anything. But it wasn’t long before I knew the best place to start delving into the power of God: the book of Psalms.
Opening up that great book, I paused at several places, able to admire a number of thoughts along the way, thoughts of the wonder of God:
“The Lord knows the way of the righteous,” writes the psalmist regarding the omniscience of God. Psalm 1:6.
Then again:
“I have set my king upon the holy hill of Zion,” says the writer – Psalm 2:6 – admiring from afar the glories of Zion, a place of glory not only for the kingdom of Judah but for the coming church of Christ about a millennium just ahead.
We could not help but pause next at the classic eighth psalm:
“O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! Who hast set thy glory above the heavens … When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him.” Psalm 8:1, 3-4.
At the end of the psalmist’s reflections, he ends just as he had begun:
“O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” – the opening and the closing serving as bookends that glorify the Lord.
True, the Lord is the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega.
What a glad refrain the psalmist’s bookends make:
“O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name!’
No greater words and no greater life mission could we declare than these. The psalmist is overwhelmed with God’s excellence much as the song poet who comes to a climactic moment in his song and probably in his life: “Then sing my soul, my Savior God to Thee, How great thou art!”
I guess it’s appropriate: We can’t complete these reflections in only a sitting or two. Some things take more time. Some even take a lifetime. “How Great Thou Art” is one of ‘em.
Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently came out of retirement twice for teaching tours at Ferris and Waxahachie High Schools. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) have slowed down some of their travels and reconvened in their evangelistic work with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the working to publish “Crossing The Georgia Line” that ran in the Ellis County Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, and see frontporchgospel.com.