How Great Thou Art!

Emilie & Logan Hoffman

This morning I had a flashback as I often do when I hear this song.  I was visiting Emilie in her new church at Princeton Alliance Church in Princeton, New Jersey.  I leaned over and told her that this is the song that was playing when I accepted Christ. I'm not sure if I have ever told her that before. It was sometime around 1967 or so.  I was at church camp in Jamestown, North Dakota.  I had begged my parents to send me to church camp although I knew no one else that was going.  It was just something I wanted to do as a fourth grader.  I'm not even sure how I found out about this camp or why I asked to go, but I'm glad I did because I met Christ for the first time in a really personal way. I'm not even sure that I really understood the scope of my commitment that summer because it wasn't until later that it totally connected. To this day, it is one of my favorite hymns along with two others that Emilie just happened to pick for her wedding. I love the old hymns and I'm sad that more churches don't teach them to their young ones. I love every stanza of this hymn and the message that it brings.

"How Great Thou Art" is a Christian hymn based on a Swedish poem written by Carl Gustav Boberg (1859-1940) in Sweden in 1885. The melody is a Swedish folk song.  It was translated into English by British missionary Stuart K. Hine, who also added two original verses of his own composition.

How Great Thou Art
Lyrics ~ Carl Boberg, 1859 - 1940

Stanza 1:

O Lord my God,

When I in awesome wonder

Consider all

The works Thy Hand hath made,

I see the stars,

I hear the rolling thunder,

Thy pow'r throughout

The universe displayed;

Stanza 2:

When through the woods

And forest glades I wander

I hear the birds

Sing sweetly in the trees;

When I look down

From lofty mountain grandeur

And hear the brook

And feel the gentle breeze;

Refrain:

Then sings my soul,

My Saviour God, to Thee,

How great Thou art!

How great Thou art!

Then sings my soul,

My Saviour God, to Thee,

How great Thou art!

How great Thou art!

Stanza 3:

When Christ shall come,

With shouts of acclamation,

And take me home,

What joy shall fill my heart!

Then I shall bow

In humble adoration

And there proclaim,

"My God, how great Thou art!"

Refrain:

Then sings my soul,

My Saviour God, to Thee,

How great Thou art!

How great Thou art!

Then sings my soul,

My Saviour God, to Thee,

How great Thou art!

How great Thou art!