For those who aren't familiar with LDS church services, we take turns speaking and sharing our feelings with each other as talks. Today in church I gave a talk on my favorite hymn and why it's my favorite. Though I have lots of favorites I chose, "Come Let Us Anew." I decided to share my talk on my blog because I feel like the message in this hymn is one that can apply to everyone. This hymn was written in the 1700s as a traditional Methodist hymn. I love it because it talks about improving ourselves and becoming better, which if you've read my blog for very long, you know I'm big on that kind of stuff.
If you've never heard this hymn before or if it’s been awhile since you heard it, you might want to watch this video, so you’ll know what I’m talking about.
"Come Let Us Anew" is a hymn that we often sing around New Year’s and then forget about for the rest of the year, which is a bit of a shame, I think. The lyrics talk about renewing our commitment to living the gospel. And that’s something we do all the time not just at the beginning of a new year. We’ve been taught that when we take the sacrament, it’s a renewal of all of our covenants (Mackay, Ensign, March 1995). We know temptations aren’t a one-time thing, they’re constant; we face them every day. For that same reason, our covenants can’t be a one-time thing. We need to constantly renew them.
So how do we do that? The answer can be found in the lyrics of this hymn, particularly in the verbs. Now, I should warn you all that I’m an English person. I majored in English, and I’ve been working as a professional editor for several years, so you’ll have to excuse me as I go a little grammar geeky on you. But if you pick out the verbs and verb phrases in the first verse of this hymn, you’ll notice some interesting things that we are told to do. I’ll list those actions for you now:
come
anew
pursue
roll round
never stand still
fulfill His will
improve our talents by the patience of hope and the labor of love
That’s the first verse. The second verse talks about how we need to hurry up and work on these things now because our lives will fly by so fast. And the third verse is about how wonderful it will be when we meet the Savior again and report on the progress we’ve made.
But today I want to focus on just this first verse because I think there are things we can all improve on. And that’s the true message of this song: that we can always improve.
So let’s start with that first verb: come. Why is it important for us to come? To me, that word expresses the importance of attending our church meetings and being present with the body of the saints. I think it’s significant that when we renew our covenants with God, when we take the sacrament, we do it all together. I think that there is great strength to be found in participating in a community of people who are all striving to become better. We can encourage each other and hold each other accountable. When one of us struggles, we all struggle together. That’s what we’ve covenanted to do, after all: “bear one another’s burdens.”
The verse continues by talking about pursuing our journey back to Heavenly Father. Even when we have setbacks, we need to “roll round” and keep moving forward. We can “never stand still” because when we think everything is fine, Nephi tells us that that’s really Satan trying to convince us that we don’t need to worry about our sins because they don’t really hurt us. But the truth is that none of us is perfect. There will always be things we can do to improve. I know that might sound depressing, like you’ll never get a break from the hard work of repenting, but there is some hope coming up in the next few lines of the verse.
The next line talks about how Christ’s commandments should be something that we fulfill gladly. Living the gospel should be “adorable” to us, in the sense that we adore or love following His will. I’m not sure about you, but I have definitely had times when I was obeying the commandments just because I knew I was supposed to and not because I truly wanted to. When those times happen, we have to pray for the desire to live righteously and pray for a deeper relationship with the Savior. It is so much easier to live the gospel because you love Christ than it is to live the gospel because someone told you to or because you’re supposed to. When we strengthen our relationship with the Savior, he helps us to stay on track and makes it easier for us to receive inspiration and guidance every day. In this way, living the gospel becomes personal for us and we can follow our personalized plans back to Heavenly Father.
In the final part of the first verse, we learn that we can improve our talents “by the patience of hope and the labor of love.” These words have become very important to me as I’ve pondered them over the years. I just talked about how it’s easier to live the gospel when you love the Savior. And that ties in with the idea that improving ourselves is a labor of love. I’ve found that it’s much easier to practice something when you already love it. Even if you’re not good at it, your interest will keep you going. For example, I am not good at playing the piano. I took lessons when I was little, but I quit in sixth grade and haven’t taken a lesson since. However I realized a few years ago that I still like to practice the piano. I can’t play well, but it’s still really fun for me to practice. And because it’s fun for me, I’ve gotten a little bit better at it. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that we become good at the things that we love to do most. So, again, we need to do whatever we can to learn to love improving ourselves because when we can turn that process into a labor of love, we’re much more likely to stick with it.
The last phrase I want to talk about in this hymn is “the patience of hope.” Patience is one of those virtues that we all think we have until we really need it, and then you realize how impatient you really are. That’s why I like that this hymn pairs patience with hope. Instead of trying to patiently endure, which sounds so painful, we can instead practice looking forward to the future with hope. I know that when we talk about talents in the church, we sometimes make talents synonymous with hobbies and that’s not really taking into account the whole scope of what a talent can be, but for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to talk about another one of my hobbies, and that’s writing.
I don’t usually broadcast this fact, especially not over the pulpit, but I’ve now written eight books that have been published. When I think about my writing, I don’t think of it as something I need to endure until I’ve mastered it. I just keep doing it because I love it, because I have high hopes for my books, and because I also hope that my writing will help me better communicate with the people around me. Sometimes the things I write come together well and find an audience, and that’s great. Other times, that doesn’t happen. But no matter what, I know that I need to be patient with myself and have hope.
At the center of all this change and improvement is our Savior’s Atonement. None of it would work without that.The Atonement allows us to keep improving, even when we think we’ve fallen too far and that there’s no hope for us. I am so grateful for a Savior who died to give us that hope. I am grateful for the testimony He has given me to know that I can change and that we all can. Repenting is hard work, but it is the best work we can do and it does make us happy. I hope that we can each continually renew our covenants and improve our talents so that, as the end of this hymn says, we can “each from [our] Lord . . . receive the glad word: well and faithfully done. Enter into my joy and sit down on my throne.”
I’m grateful for the many examples I have in my life and the people that I get to join with as we all renew our covenants together and strive to improve so that we can return to our Heavenly Father someday.
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