C.S. Lewis wrote: "If [a schoolboy] is an imaginative boy he will, quite probably, be revelling in the English poets and romancers suitable to his age some time before he begins to suspect that Greek grammar is going to lead him to more and more enjoyments of this same sort--but the grammar learned as a boy will lead to a deep adult enjoyment ("The Weight of Glory," from The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, reprinted in The Essential C.S. Lewis, ed. Lyle W. Dorsett [New York: Collier Books, 1988], 363).
It's time to get rid of the notion that praise choruses allow us an emotional connection to God while hymns afford us an intellectual understanding.
Every word we sing has meaning and yields either an emotional connection or the potential for it. With hymns, the potential may take longer to realize; the more words we sing, the more meaning we may need to process. The fuller meaning of so many words sung in one breath may fly by us in the first dozen or so times that we sing, and then begin to soak in.
Christians talk a lot about not being conformed to this world but being transformed by the renewal of our minds--but isn't our worship conforming us to our present culture of impatience for meaning with its quick fix of flashing images and sound bites and brief choruses?
The emotional connection is present. It is deep. It is waiting for us. I am convinced that the Spirit Himself is waiting for us in the hymns.
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