Selwyn Hughes said the Sacrifice of Praise is thanksgiving with blood on its hands. Hughes was the writer behind Every Day with Jesus, a daily devotional read by millions around the world and a tool used by God to cement His truths in hearts across the nations. He was also a widower, a man who lost his wife to cancer twenty years before his own death; he also outlived their two sons. Yet Selwyn Hughes continued to write the praises and glories of his God of abundance: surely an act of thanksgiving with blood on its hands.
Today one of the lead stories on the news concerns the upcoming battle for the number one Christmas single. Two competing versions of Leonard Cohen’s 1984 song Hallelujah look like taking positions one and two on next week’s chart: for the first time two cover versions of the one song filling both top positions on the Christmas week charts. I must admit that this song, in the Velvet Underground’s John Cale’s version, was until recently for me “the wedding theme from Shrek”; but today I went and looked up the lyrics. It is a Sacrifice of Praise.
Well Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
she tied you to her kitchen chair
And she broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
I love the anguish of that last couplet; it’s hardly All Tomorrow’s Parties is it? (But perhaps Bathsheba was Venus in Furs, it sure makes Psalm 51:7 a lot more interesting.)
Well baby I've been here before
I've seen this room and I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew ya
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Leonard Cohen spent over a year writing this song, and wrote over eighty verses before settling on the final six he released in 1988; he substantially rewrote it in 1994. Can it be called a labour of love? Not with that refrain.
Well maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who'd out drew ya
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
I love words and I have always found strength in my own prayers in the Hebrew word "Hosanna". Hallelujah translates to English as “praise God” Hallelu Jah(weh), where Hosanna is “God save me”. Hosanna is a cry of desperate dependence: it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah. Unlike CQD or SOS Hosanna is more than a cry for assistance, it’s a sacrifice of praise.
Whether Alexandra or Jeff top the chart on Friday I’m stoked that “Christian Rhyme” as Cliff might (not) call it will be the song on everyone’s I-pod.
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I love this song. Everyone does, right? But it's not a happy song. I like that. It's not a song for church though. Not a normal church song, at least. While there are many who can, it's a minority of Christians, I think, who can *really* sing that song - because it's not about being a musician. It's about having been there. I couldn't sing it properly. I can understand the feelings, but I can only be thankful that I've never been _that_ broken.
It was fantastic on the Choir of Hard Knocks though - they DO know it.
I just think you can have too much of it though, especially when it is sung for the beauty of the song, not the depth of the words... I think it's the words that Hallelujah is about.
Interesting point about "hosanna". We typically think of it the other way - "hosanna" as praise just as much as "hallelujah".
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