Infants in Hymns – Part 2
At a recent Missions Conference at a local church, I got to sing some wonderful hymns—including “Christ for the World We Sing”, which was written in 1869 by Samuel Wolcott.
As we sang through the hymn, the lyrics from verse 4 jumped out at me. (This was the second time that morning that I noticed hymn lyrics having to do with newborn babies! To hear about the first one, feel free to check out our Created for Him episode from last week.)
But this time, in THIS hymn, verse 4 said:
“Christ for the world we sing; the world to Christ we bring with joyful song:
the newborn souls whose days, reclaimed from error’s ways, inspired with hope and praise, to Christ belong.”
I think the writer was probably thinking of new Christian men and women when he wrote “newborn souls” being reclaimed from error’s ways…
But I couldn’t help but think of all the preborn babies—all those newborn souls—whose parents might have been leaning toward abortion, but instead—went to a pregnancy center, encountered God’s love and truth about life, turned away from abortion and chose the gift of LIFE for their baby.
I also love the hymn’s declaration that newborn souls belong to Jesus Christ. Because they do! We ALL do. As it says in Colossians 1:16 – all things were made by Jesus and for Jesus. To Christ we belong. We have all been Created for Him.