← Previous · Home · Next →

Hymns of My Youth II: In His Holy Temple

Two weeks ago, I completed my pass through the The Concordia Hymnal, concluding the Hymns of My Youth series. Or so I thought. Then it occurred to me that, while Concordia had been the primary hymnal of the churches in which I was raised, each of those churches had secondary hymnals (“. . . turn to Number 238 in the red hymnal . . .”). I happen to have a couple of them, and having wanted something similar with which to fill Saturdays, I’m starting this second series in the hymnal Great Hymns of the Faith. It’s a Baptist hymnal, full of those cheesy gospel songs that Baptists love (Concordia has its share of bad songs, too), but it has a lot of good hymns, too.

Today’s hymn isn’t a hymn, but a liturgical piece. Back in the old days, before we learned that Jesus is our boyfriend and wants us to sing songs about falling in love with him, a Sunday School in a small town in South Dakota opened each Lord's Day with this call to worship from Habakkuk 2:20.

What profit is the idol when its maker has carved it,

Or an image, a teacher of falsehood?

For its maker trusts in his own handiwork

When he fashions speechless idols.

Woe to him who says to a piece of wood, “Awake!”

To a mute stone, “Arise!”

And that is your teacher?

Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver,

And there is no breath at all inside it.

But the Lord is in His holy temple.

Let all the earth be silent before Him.

—Habakkuk 2:15–20

The Lord Is in His Holy Temple

The Lord is in His holy temple,
The Lord is in His holy temple:
Let all the earth keep silence,
Let all the earth keep silence before Him—
Keep silence, keep silence before Him.

—Great Hymns of the Faith (Zondervan, 1968).