A Hymn for "Aha!" Moments (Everyday Hymns Series)

Think back to the last "aha" moment you've had. It was pretty great, wasn't? All of a sudden you realize something you had no hope of realizing just a moment before. You're completely in the dark.

And then just like that, you get it.

"Aha" moments are surprising like that! 

Sometimes they're small (maybe more like an "oh, yeah, I knew that" moment) and sometimes they really stir up those gray cells and open up whole new lines of thought.

Recently something occurred to me in the form of an aha moment and of course I wondered, "is there a hymn for that?" 

Well, you bet there is! 

Any hymn that focuses on knowing Christ or learning new things from Scripture would work. The Christian life is full of surprise moments of knowledge. We do, after all, have the Holy Spirit inside us illuminating His Word every time we read it.

"I  Cannot Tell" by William Fullerton begins each stanza with what we don't fully know and the concludes with what we do know: "But this I know, He heals the brokenhearted and stays our sin and calms our lurking fear . . . " In a way, each "but this I know" in every stanza alludes to a time when we truly believed and became convinced for ourselves of Jesus' love, death, burial and resurrection.

And "Open  My Eyes That I May See" is essentially a prayer for divine "aha" moments. 

But for today's everyday hymn for "aha"  moments, I can't think of a better one than this one celebrating the greatest thing all believers know: Jesus Christ, the Crucified. 

Ask Me What Great Think I Know?

Ask ye what great thing I know
that delights and stirs me so?
What the high reward I win?
Whose the name I glory in?
Jesus Christ, the Crucified.

Who defeats my fiercest foes?
Who consoles my saddest woes?
Who revives my waiting heart,
healing all its hidden smart?
Jesus Christ, the Crucified.

Who is life in life to me?
Who the death of death will be?
Who will place me on His right
with the countless hosts of light?
Jesus Christ, the Crucified.

This is that great thing I know;
this delights and stirs me so:
faith in Him who died to save,
Him who triumphed o'er the grave,
Jesus Christ, the Crucified.

By Johann C. Schwedler (1741); translated by Benjamin Hall Kennedy (1863)