Common Ground Song 41 ‘God the Father’
Words: © Ian D Cunningham / Music: traditional
YouTube recording:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bpt_z0oT94
Featured image: © Musica Sacra via Flickr

This is a straightforward Trinitarian hymn. I had planned to sing and blog about it during the Trinity season (first week of June this year) but I will be on holiday, so it has got ‘transferred’ as we say in the Church. The tune in Common Ground is an unfamiliar one, and the recording I found (linked above) uses the much better known ‘Cwm Rhondda’, so let’s stick with that.

The lyrics first praise God as Creator, ‘source of life and energy’, asking that we use the freedom he has given us to be ‘loving children’. Then it asks Jesus as our Lord and brother to make us patient, obedient servants for each other. And the Holy Spirit to give us ‘peace that makes us one’ as we seek to do God’s will. Finally, we declare ourselves to be ‘members of our Saviour’s body’ seeking to share in the perfect love of the Trinity. The emphasis, then, is very much not just on God himself, but on his relationship with us as the Church (in Christian theology, often called the ‘bride of Christ’ to emphasise the enduring commitment that we make to him and to each other).

All the usual images made to try and illustrate the Trinity (including the one used here) end up being some variant on a triangle, usually curved and interlinked to emphasise that we see the Father, Son and Spirit as intimately connected while remaining distinct. That’s fine. But it set me thinking: there are four verses to this hymn, one for each of the members of the Trinity, and one about the Christian Church. There are several other hymns that do the same. So why do we not have a fourfold image: Father, Son, Spirit and Bride? I’m no artist myself, and a few goes with an AI image generator didn’t yield anything like what I was looking for. If you can do better, please let me know.