Well, I did have to change evening songs. I couldn't get past the second verse of "Abide with me: Fast falls the eventide". I don't see that changing anytime soon, since "Amazing Grace" and "I heard the bells on Christmas Day" have been making me cry for years, and its only gotten worse the older I get.
In my search for evening hymns, I discovered a few things. One, there are a lot of them, and most of them have fallen out of disuse in recent years since fewer and fewer churches have evening services. Some of them have very weird texts. Some of them have beautiful texts. An oddly large number of them seem to have non-tunes or un-sing-ably thumpy tunes. A few seemed to be chants that they had tried to turn into hymns. And in modern hymnals, they all seem to be used for funerals or memorial services.
While I think that the primary reason these hymns have fallen out of disuse is primarily the lack of evening church and the dated-ness of a lot of them, I can't help but wonder if part of it is the shift in emphasis in the church. A lot of older hymns and prayers, particularly ones meant for use at the beginning and end of the day, have a focus on God's protection against a host of evils. Demons, sickness, ill intent of man, temptation and sin, accident. All these things were fair game.
Demons are definitely out of style these days. People aren't demon possessed, they are either mentally ill or evil (heavily leaning towards the former). There is no supernatural hand at work in natural evils either. Temptations come from within our own sinful psyches, not a demon whispering in our ear. To a large part I don't disagree. Biological disease, byproducts of a chaotic system, and our own sinfulness can account for much, if not all, things attributed to demons. But I can't help but wonder if we are losing something by saying in effect, "Sure, they had demons back then, but not in this day and age". There is probably somebody's masters or doctoral thesis on the loss of demons in our popular theology.
Sickness. We pray a lot for the sick. What church doesn't have a prayer list with the members of the congregation who are ill? But we don't seem to pray as much for protection against sickness ever happening in the first place. Is it because we think we can control it now? We understand germ theory, we wash our hands, sneeze into our sleeves, have good public sanitation. But we still get sick. Rogue germs, our own bodies turning on us, merest chance encounter with that one mosquito/rusty nail/cat scratch. We may not get sick over night with cholera, but we are still as vulnerable as ever, just to other things.
Ill intent of our fellow seems a really odd thing not to pray against these days, seeing as how one ill intentioned person can do so much more damage. Old days, you might get robbed, maybe stabbed, but the bad guys were limited in scope. These days, one person can kill thousands and be no where near them when it happens. Why exactly aren't we praying against this?
Accidents don't happen any less frequently. We aren't any less tempted. So what gives?
Reflecting on my own practice, discussions with other believers, popular books, I'm beginning to think that we are forgetting "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." More and more I hear God being used as a kind of supernatural therapist and happy pill. An adult security blanket. A lot of focus on God's love, not a lot on him as warrior, physician, protector, or anything else. Even His love seems to be getting kinda wishy washy in our popular mind. When was the last CCM song that talked about God being "my battleshield, sword for the fight"? Or even a mighty fortress? Do we think all that warrior talk is just for those primitive warrior types, not us sophisticated, civilized people? Do we really think we have any less war? Are we really buying into the progressive, humanist tripe that we can make the world good if we just try hard enough?
This has turned slightly more rant-ish than I had intended. But I think what started as a devotional exercise with hymns (and still is) has turned into a desire to read the writings of more of those saint who have gone before, a long time ago. Sure, some it wont be any good, but I have a suspicion that we may have thrown out the baby with the bathwater on some stuff.
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