What does Your Heart Need This Summer? A Summer Project That Will Make Your Heart Sing!

You know, when you think about it: how many songs can you remember that you sing about heaven?  In much of the current worship repertoire, there is a paucity of songs about heaven. Why is this? Does it matter? Our singing should reflect our Christian walk and focus. Consider: “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Col. 3:2). Isn’t that wildly hopeful? In their third book of hymn collections, Hosannas Forever, Dave and Barbara Leeman present 52 hymns of heaven which include a brief history of the author of the text, the composer of the music, and a short devotional application. What to do? What if we learned and sang one hymn per week from this book?! I mean — what a summer project that our hearts all need right now! It’s a joy to welcome David and Barbara to the farm’s table today…

Guest Post by David and Barbara Leeman

Is yearning for Heaven a form of escapism?

Honestly? No, not at all!

Christ has told us to long for it. He knows the pain that a world of sin brings and desires to guide us through our trials and be our faithful Savior. We can take great comfort in the fact that ultimately He wants to provide our release from sin’s horrors by taking us to Heaven in His time.

“Longing for Heaven fashions our hearts to love the Creator more.“

Longing for Heaven fashions our hearts to love the Creator more. It also enables us to stop clutching so tightly to this world, which frees us to sacrifice ourselves for God and others as long as we remain in it.

The most heavenly minded people, it turns out, are free to do the most earthly good! But this longing is not like waiting long for graduation, a birthday party, or a vacation. Looking from the vantage point of our pilgrimage as described in the early stanzas of these hymns, we need to become heavenly minded.

Paul says in Colossians 3:1–2, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” These words are not a suggestion but a command.

Cameron Cole writes, The Lord commands us to think about eternity as a daily habit. Heavenly mindedness serves as a deliberate, ongoing spiritual practice. Paul’s portrayal of heavenly mindedness is comprised of more than just an intellectual exercise. His exhortation included the emotions and desires of the heart. One could characterize this aspect of heavenly mindedness as heavenly longing.

In Romans 8:23 Paul writes that “not only creation, but we ourselves . . . groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”

Oh, the wonder and glories of Heaven! Do you long to go there? 

We sang many songs about Heaven as children. Few are sung today and even fewer are written by modern hymn-writers. Could it be that in these days of relative prosperity and ease of life, we don’t feel the need for anything better? 

Let us change that by learning and singing more heaven-hymns — could there be a better undertaking for our hearts this summer?!

Along with the lyrics and melodies you will find brief biographies of the author of the text, of the composer of the tunes, and brief devotional words of encouragement and hope from these hymns.

Day One, Hymn One: “Day by Day”

Karolina Sandell Berg was born in Sweden in the nineteenth century during a time of revivals in Europe, England, and America.

Lina, as she was nicknamed, was the daughter of Jonas Sandell, the Lutheran pastor of their town. She and her father were remarkably close, due in part to her health issues in childhood that caused her to prefer her father’s study to playing outside.

When she was 26, the two were traveling to Gothenburg when their boat lurched forward, and he fell overboard. Lina watched him drown. She returned home to grieve and found comfort and consolation by reading her Bible and writing hymns.

In the first year after her father’s death, she wrote fourteen of her most loved hymns, including “Children of the Heavenly Father.” Seven years later, she wrote “Day by Day,” the second of her most well-known works. Erwin Lutzer says, “Far from seeing this incident as a cruel oversight on God’s part, she saw in her father’s death an expression of loving protection!”

Karolina wrote over 650 hymns and became known as the “Fanny Crosby of Sweden.”

As you sing this hymn . . . you are reminding yourself and testifying to others that your heavenly Father is no distant God.

This text is a powerful reminder that He is an ever-present help and gives continuous comfort in all our trials and troubles, no matter how severe.

He is with us every day, every hour, every moment, “with a special mercy for each hour.”

It is a reminder of His pledge to His children: “As your days, so shall your strength be” (Deut. 33:25)

 “Help me then in every tribulation so to trust Thy promises, Oh, Lord,
that I lose not faith’s sweet consolation offered me within Thy holy Word.
Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting, e’er to take, as from a father’s hand, 
one by one, the days, the moments fleeting, till I reach the promised land.“

How important is it that we sing about heaven when we are both young and old? Singing stirs our heart to tell the Lord how much we love Him and look forward to our “home” with Him without the slightest tinge of repetitive boredom.

David and Barbara Leeman, now retired, have spent their careers in church and Christian School leadership and teaching, (ministry). In evaluating the number of songs they have used in worship or taught to children that focused their hearts and minds on heaven, they regretfully found too few.

In Hosannas Forever, they curated fifty-two hymns about heaven, one for devotional thoughts or family worship each week of the year. They are chosen from a wide variety of eras, denominations, and music styles in a book beautifully published by Moody Publishers.   

{Our humble thanks to Moody Publishers for their partnership in today’s devotional.}