Two pieces of music have been running through my head today. First, the beautiful hymn by Isaac Watts, “When I survey the wondrous cross.” It will figure in my sermon tomorrow, but not in the obvious way. Watts quotes Paul’s statement in Philippians, tomorrow’s epistle reading, “My richest gain I count but loss.” Perhaps it’s the sheer familiarity of Watts that brings him to mind so often: “O God our help in ages past” is perhaps his best known. Watts is probably the most important hymn-writer in the English language, if only because he was the first person to write a significant number of them.

The second piece is one of the movements of the Brahms Requiem, which uses a text from Psalm 126:6-7. I won’t work with it in my sermon, although the beginning of the Psalm appears.

At a previous transition point in my life, I said that one of my goals in life was to sing the Brahms Requiem. Well, I did it, in Spartanburg, some years ago, and it was a deeply moving experience for me.