As part of our Focus series, Sing to The Lord, Evan wrote a poem that reflects on the hymn How Great Thou Art.

You can listen to the audio file below, as well as read the words.

My heart is a stubborn-stringed harp
That rarely rings.
Untuned, it barely brings its music to my soul.

Yet creation is not quiet.
Not now, nor then,
Not in daylight, nor in Nature’s so called silent night;
And least of all, in that time in between
When the bow of birdsong is drawn across the boughs
Of trees whose leaves at night have strummed the stars.

For then, at dawn, the skies aglow with sound,
The world returns to me its borrowed song,
My soul unlearns the silence of the years;
Woodpeckers pick the stiff strings of my heart,
And so my soul, against its will, sings out:
”How great Thou art, How great Thou art.“

And when I think of those three trees
Nailed to the darkened sky,
Of the chorusless wait for dawn that lasted three days,
I scarce can take it in.
And yet, somehow the souls of those who’ve gone before,
Begin to rise, and rising, fall no more,
Instead they sing, and will forever sing:
“How great Thou art, How great Thou art.“