Seeking Jesus
There’s a song in our hymnal (I bet it’s in yours too; it was written in 1877) titled Break Thou the Bread of Life. In the Church of Christ, most song leaders seem to have the idea that this is a “before the communion” song, but it’s not. There’s no reference to the Lord’s Supper at all in the song. The “bread of life” is the Word of God, so if it’s a “before anything” song, it’s a “before the sermon” song.
But that’s not the point.
There’s another hymnal I’ve seen in use at various congregations across the country that has changed the words of the second bar of verse one of this song. The song says, “Beyond the sacred page, I seek Thee, Lord”, and this one book (that will remain unnamed) has changed the words to “Within the sacred page…”.
Actually I have no philosophical problem with that change, and the editor had the right to do that with this public domain song. Something in me though, just wants to sing a song as written, so I have a natural rebellion to someone publishing a song contrary to the original rendition. (Recognizing, of course, that people do publish alternate arrangements all the time, but such is not the case here. This is a simple matter of a word change.)
That said, I got to wondering — there’s no doubt that the changed wording is biblically-correct, but is there any sense in which the original wording is scriptural? IOW, is there a way we can correctly seek Jesus “beyond the sacred page”?
I believe there is, but rather than tell you what I think (which I’m generally not hesitant to do), I’d like to hear your take on this. What do you think? Can we legitimately seek Jesus beyond Scripture? Comments?
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Posted on July 14th, 2008 by Bob Mathews
Filed under: Growth, Jesus
