Journal

Immortal, invisible

Posted on October 8th, 2008, in the afternoon

I've been worshipping with 'Immortal, Invisible' this last week. It's obviously a very famous hymn but I'd never played it before.

I'd been put off both by the theme and by the language. The unknowableness of God is not a well-developed theme in contemporary worship, and lines like "nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might" are the kind that seem to rather slip in and out of meaningfulness depending on your mood.

But the main preaching points for Sunday's Crux meeting were so in tune with the opening verse that I really had no choice but to engage with it.

The melody is fairly friendly to sing and can be well supported by simple guitar chords. After a little bit of wrestling the rhythm is also a fairly straightforward 3:4 strum. It's not a difficult hymn to play. (See my chords below).

But as I said, the lyrics are definitely another matter. There's no getting around the initial obliquness of the language, but after only a few times through I'm feeling much more confident with what's going on. It's a valuable addition to our worshipping vocabulary.

Cyberhymnal lists five original verses but there's a common redaction of the final two to make a much more satisfying four-verse version. The four-verse version avoids both the most archaic language and the least straightforward themes so I didn't have much hestitation in embracing the revision.

The only other change I've made is 'laud' to 'praise' in the last verse. I'm usually reluctant to change hymn words but this is fairly unobtrusive and really clarifies the meaning of the last lines.

I think I'll mostly repeat the second half of the first verse to finish when I lead worship with it. I absolutely love these lines:

Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.

• Chords - G (PDF, 21kb)