Sunday Hymnal

At the First Baptist Church

we sang out the strains

of The Old Rugged Cross

in four-part harmony,

mostly in soprano voices,

men and women carrying the melody,

and the bass barely heard;

the tenors strain to reach notes

too high for their untrained voices,

and the altos are lost among the rest.

But it was Sunday and the joyful noise

rose high in this old church

where the faithful gathered weekly.

We sat in our family pews,

rising on command at the organ’s first notes

to sing the old songs of faith,

a faith that daily sustained us,

brought us here on Sundays, faithfully.

And the Old Rugged Cross,

that emblem of suffering and shame

gave us a Blessed Assurance,

a foretaste of glory divine;

then sings my soul, oh Lord,

How Great Though Art, saved and sheltered

here in the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church

singing out the words of the hymns I grew up with,

hymns of praise and a faith that sustains,

great is thy faithfulness.