How Great (and how Fearsome?) Thou Art

Nepal post-quake - Joe Sieder/AP Photo

We sang this song in chapel after having prayed all week for the people of Nepal. I thought to myself: How do we sing this song after an earthquake?

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder 

Consider all the worlds* thy hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear the rolling* thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed:

When through the woods and forest glades I wander
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze:

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee: 

How great thou art! How great thou art!

I suppose it is not necessarily out of line: A reminder and a song of faith amidst the rubble. Perhaps the first verse could even be sung in a more somber mood. The words marked by asterisks were originally *works and *mighty. Even in the original, the general tenor of this (and of other songs like it) is pretty much all in the direction of birds singing sweetly rather than taking flight for survival.

Doesn't this give the ascription of 'greatness' a rather nostalgic, privileged, self-serving, anthropocentric tone? We do this with nature all the time (and not just in church): For our purposes nature can mean whatever we want it to mean.

Fresh off some recent reading (namely Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing and Ronald Osborne's Death Before the Fall), I found myself wondering: What if, instead of being about the pleasures of nature, one of these first two verses sung about its horrors? How would that change the complexion of the chorus and the verses that follow, not to mention our understanding of God and creation?

As a thought exercise, hum along again with the earthquake in mind, and with only the amendment of a few choice words [in brackets]:

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder 

Consider all the worlds thy hands have made,
[We] see the stars, [we] hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed:

When through the woods and forest glades I wander
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,
And hear the [falls] and feel the [gusting] breeze:

Then sings my soul, [our] Savior God, to thee: 

How great thou art! How great thou art!

And when I think that God, his Son not sparing, 

Sent him to die, I scarce can take it in, 

That on the cross, [our] burden gladly bearing, 

He bled and died to take away [our] sin. 

When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation 

And [make this] home, what joy shall fill my heart! 

Then shall I bow in humble adoration, 

And there proclaim, [our] God, how great thou art!

That's a modestly suggestive attempt, but hopefully you get the sense of it. I'd love to see another verse (not to mention a theology) which rounded out the awe-full reflection on nature, depicting it in all its wild otherness as a co-creature in need of our reconciliation with God. It might be less comfortable, but more profound.