A Good Friday Meditation, Part 1: Sorrow and Love Flow Mingled Down

Last Sunday, Palm Sunday, as Christians everywhere entered into the annual act of remembrance that is known as Holy Week, I was singing with the choir at the Old Presbyterian Meeting House in Alexandria, VA.   The music was lovely, the choir very, very good, and the sermon meaningful, but what stuck with me through this week of preparation and searching and devotion was the offertory anthem we sang.  It was not some famous work or some especially difficult piece -- it was just a Hal Hopson arrangement of that most famous of famous hymn texts by Isaac Watts, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross."  The words were so familiar,…
Read More