Singing Our Song

I grew up in a house filled with music. So did my wife, Sandy. Consequently, the home we have built together is a place of melody and lyric. Friends and family sometimes say, “You have a song for everything.”

In a sense that’s true.  A situation, a look, a comment, a pair of notes, triggers a musical memory and we start to sing. Music gives our lives meaning.

In fact, certain songs mean so much to us we claim them.  These songs seem to belong to us, they are our songs.

Schools have songs too—fight songs, alma maters and the like.  Northwest Nazarene University has a song—the University Hymn. For many years the NNC hymn was the gospel song, Hallelujah, Amen. Its lyrics reminded students that they are part of a larger body of believers, faculty and students, all of whom are fellow travelers on faith’s journey until one day we all gather around heaven’s throne.

In the 2008-2009 school year, a new hymn was chosen. The NNU University Hymn is Be Thou My Vision. The song is an eighth-century prayer. Like its predecessor, the lyrics of the prayer encourage the singer, the student, to press on, “to look to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”

At the first chapel of the 2013 Spring Semester, I spoke about the content and significance of the NNU University Hymn in the life of the university and in the lives of the students, faculty, university staff and alumni.

Here is a link to that address:  http://www.nnu.edu/offices/presidents-office/presidents-messages/spring-2013-chapel-january-16th/. I hope you’ll take the time to read the words of the message, and as you encounter the lyrics of Be Thou My Vision, may they become your prayer, as we seek to make it the prayer of Northwest Nazarene University.