How Great Thou Art: Poetry That Turns Wonder into Worship
There are poems we read, poems we remember, and poems that become part of us.
And then there are poems we sing.
For the next several Tuesdays, Poetry Tuesday is exploring some of the great hymns of the Christian faith. Hymns are, in a very real sense, poetry set free from the page. They give words to praise, doubt, sorrow, gratitude, confession, and hope—and then invite us to give those words back to God.
Last Tuesday we began with Reginald Heber's great hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” a hymn that calls us to contemplate the holiness and majesty of God.
Today we turn from the holiness of God to the wonder of His creation and the greatness of His saving work.
We turn to one of the best-loved hymns in the Christian tradition:
“How Great Thou Art.”
A Hymn with a Journey
Few hymns have traveled quite the journey that brought “How Great Thou Art” into English-speaking churches.
Its story begins in Sweden with Carl Gustaf Boberg (1859–1940), a Swedish preacher, poet, and editor.
In 1885, Boberg wrote a Swedish poem beginning with the words O store Gud—“O great God.” The poem was published in 1886 in the Swedish newspaper Mönsterås Tidningen. It was not originally the four-stanza hymn familiar to us today, but a much longer poem of nine stanzas.
The poem eventually traveled through several languages and cultures.
It was translated into German, then into Russian. In the 1920s, British missionaries Stuart and Mercy Hine encountered the Russian version while serving in Eastern Europe. The hymn became part of their missionary ministry, and Stuart Hine eventually produced the English version that would become so familiar to Christians around the world.
The English hymn, therefore, is not simply a translation of a Swedish poem.
It is the product of a long journey.
And perhaps that is fitting.
The words themselves speak of a God whose greatness cannot be confined to one language, one country, or one generation.
“When I in Awesome Wonder”
The hymn begins not with an argument but with an experience.
The worshiper looks.
The heavens are above.
The stars are visible.
Thunder rolls.
Creation stretches beyond our ability to comprehend it.
And the response is not merely, “How interesting.”
It is worship.
The poetry moves from observation to adoration.
That movement is one of the great strengths of the hymn.
We look at creation—and then we look beyond creation to the Creator.
We hear the thunder—and recognize the power of the One who made the universe.
We see the stars—and are reminded that the God who made them is greater still.
This is something Scripture does repeatedly.
The Psalms look at the heavens and respond with praise.
The book of Job looks into the mysteries of creation and responds with humility.
Paul writes that God's invisible qualities can be perceived through what He has made.
Creation becomes a kind of window.
It doesn't replace Scripture.
It doesn't replace revelation.
But it can awaken our sense of wonder.
And wonder can become worship.
The Poetry of Awe
There is something important about the phrase “awesome wonder.”
Wonder makes us pause.
It interrupts our ordinary way of seeing.
We become aware that the world is larger than our routines, our schedules, our problems, and our concerns.
We can become so accustomed to the world around us that we stop seeing it.
The sunrise becomes ordinary.
The night sky becomes ordinary.
The sound of rain becomes ordinary.
The changing seasons become ordinary.
But poetry has a way of making the familiar strange again.
It teaches us to look.
That is what Boberg's poem—and Hine's English adaptation—does so beautifully.
It invites us to stop and see.
And when we truly see, we may find ourselves saying what the hymn says:
How great Thou art.
The point is not simply that creation is beautiful.
The point is that creation points beyond itself.
The stars are not the destination.
They are the signpost.
The mountains are not the object of worship.
They direct our eyes toward the One who made them.
The thunder is not the voice of God in some simplistic sense.
But its power can remind us of the One whose power is beyond our comprehension.
The poem turns observation into theology.
And theology into worship.
From Creation to Christ
But “How Great Thou Art” does not remain among the stars.
This is one of the reasons the hymn is so powerful.
It begins with creation, but it moves toward redemption.
The greatness of God is not demonstrated only in the size of the universe.
It is demonstrated in the love of God.
The hymn eventually brings us to Jesus Christ and the cross.
Here the poetry changes direction.
We have been looking upward.
Now we look toward Calvary.
The God whose power is displayed in creation is the God who gives His Son.
The God who made the stars is the God who enters His creation.
The God whose greatness overwhelms us is the God whose grace comes near to us.
That is a breathtaking movement.
Creation tells us something about God's greatness.
The cross tells us something about God's love.
And Christianity insists that we need both.
A God of infinite power who does not love us would leave us afraid.
A God who loves us but has no power to save us would leave us without hope.
But the Christian gospel gives us both:
greatness and grace.
“Then Sings My Soul”
And then comes the great response of the hymn.
Not simply:
“I understand.”
Not:
“I have figured everything out.”
Not even:
“I have answers to all my questions.”
Instead:
“Then sings my soul.”
That may be the heart of the entire hymn.
The soul sees.
The soul hears.
The soul remembers.
The soul considers what God has done.
And finally the soul sings.
This is where poetry becomes worship.
The hymn does not merely tell us that God is great.
It gives us words with which we can respond to His greatness.
That distinction matters.
There is a difference between knowing about God and being moved to worship God.
The hymn takes the truth of God's greatness and places it upon the lips of ordinary believers.
A child can sing it.
A congregation can sing it.
A grieving believer can sing it.
A missionary can sing it far from home.
A person standing beneath a night sky can whisper it.
A church filled with hundreds of voices can proclaim it.
And somehow the same words continue to work.
A Hymn Born in Many Places
Perhaps there is another reason this hymn has endured.
Its history itself reflects the worldwide nature of Christianity.
A Swedish poet writes.
The poem is translated.
A Russian version travels across borders.
British missionaries encounter it.
Stuart Hine reshapes it in English.
The hymn eventually crosses the Atlantic.
It is sung in churches and at evangelistic meetings.
And through the Billy Graham evangelistic campaigns, it became particularly well known to millions of people. George Beverly Shea and Cliff Barrows helped make it one of the signature hymns of those campaigns.
The journey is remarkable.
But perhaps the deeper lesson is simple.
A hymn can travel farther than its author ever imagined.
A poem written in one language can become the prayer of people speaking dozens of others.
Words written more than a century ago can still rise from the lips of believers today.
That is one of the mysteries—and gifts—of Christian poetry.
Wonder in an Ordinary World
We don't need to stand on a mountaintop to experience wonder.
Sometimes we simply need to look.
Look at the sky.
Listen to the rain.
Watch the changing light.
Notice the trees.
Hear the birds.
Remember the stars.
And then remember the Creator.
But the hymn takes us farther still.
It reminds us that the greatest wonder is not simply that God made such a magnificent world.
The greatest wonder is that the God who made it came into it to save us.
That is why the hymn ultimately leads us from creation to Christ.
From stars to the cross.
From wonder to worship.
From what God has made to what God has done.
And finally, from the greatness of God to the response of the human soul:
How great Thou art.
Poetry That Helps Us See
A good poem doesn't merely give us information.
It teaches us to see.
And a good hymn does something even more.
It teaches us to see—and then gives us words with which to respond.
That is what “How Great Thou Art” does.
It teaches us to look at creation with wonder.
It teaches us to look at Christ with gratitude.
It teaches us to look beyond ourselves.
And it teaches us that wonder does not have to remain silent.
Wonder can become praise.
Perhaps that is why this hymn has endured for so many generations.
The world is still here.
The stars are still shining.
Thunder still rolls.
Birds still sing.
Christ still saves.
And the soul still has reason to sing.
How Great Thou Art
The hymn begins with a person looking at the world God has made.
It ends with a person looking toward the God who has made and redeemed that world.
Between those two moments lies the journey of faith.
We see.
We wonder.
We remember.
And then we worship.
That is the gift of this hymn.
It takes the immense beauty and power of creation and turns our eyes toward its Creator.
It takes the mystery of the cross and turns our hearts toward our Savior.
And it gives us a simple response:
How great Thou art.
“The heavens declare the glory of God.”— Psalm 19:1
Until Next Tuesday
A good hymn doesn't merely tell us what someone else believed.
It gives us words with which we can believe, hope, remember, and worship.
That is why these old hymns have endured.
Last Tuesday, we stood before the holiness of God.
Today, we have looked at the wonder of His creation and the greatness of His redemption.
Next Tuesday, we'll turn to another great hymn and another poet whose words have helped generations of Christians give voice to their faith.
For today, though, perhaps it is enough simply to look again at the world around us.
To see.
To wonder.
And then to let the soul sing.
How great Thou art.
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Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen. 1 Tim 1:17
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Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise.
Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might;
Thy justice, like mountains, high soaring above
Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.
To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but naught changeth Thee.
Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore Thee, all veiling their sight;
Of all Thy rich graces this grace, Lord, impart
Take the veil from our faces, the vile from our heart.
All laud we would render; O help us to see
’Tis only the splendor of light hideth Thee,
And so let Thy glory, almighty, impart,
Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.
Walter C. Smith, Hymns of Christ and the Christian Life, 1876.
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