This morning as I was driving to work, and I somehow hit a button that started playing songs that I had downloaded on my phone. My favorite music is from the late 60’s to early 70’s like Three Dog Night, Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), Doobie Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd etc. I also have some old gospel hymns that I have downloaded over the years. This morning, I guess that was what I was intended to hear.

The song that came on this morning was a gospel song that the Cathedral Quartet had recorded back in late 80’s called, Step into The Water.  Over the years, there are many new Christian groups and newer Christian songs, but for me, it’s the old gospel hymns that touch my heart. Years ago, I started reading the history of some of the old Baptist hymns and found that many times the songs were written in difficult times and many were written due the author’s need to hear the gospel through song. One such song is “It is well with my soul.” It was written in 1873 after the author had just lost his whole family when the ship they were on sank. There is something humbling and endearing when after 146 years you hear a song that was penned by a man struggling to make sense of the greatest lose a human can endure.

It is the old hymns that reach a part of me that recognizes there is a God and he does exist.

One of most impressionable moments in my memory was when my daughters were little, and we had been invited to attend a several day event at Ridgecrest in the Black Hill mountains of North Carolina. The first night we went to service, there was probably two thousand people in attendance. The song leader stood up and led the congregation in an acapella version of the old gospel hymn, Amazing Grace. There have not been many times in my life that I felt the presence of God stronger than at that moment. KT