Doxa Logia (Saying Glory)

The other afternoon I was watching the 1993 movie The Secret Garden. The idea of finding a buried key and locked iron door to a stone-walled garden is magical fun. In the story, an unwell boy, named Colin Craven, has been shunned by his father since he was a sickly born baby, whose mother died in childbirth. Devastated at the loss of his wife, Mr. Craven spends months away from his home and rarely if ever sees his son. Colin becomes well after spending time with his cousin, Mary Lennox and her friend, Dicken, in a secret garden they found locked away. Colin begs the manor's servants to send for his father so he can see how well he's gotten. When they don't, he asks his friends to resort to magic to bring him home. They build a bonfire and chant some gobbledygook words and then "Oh, great magic, please come to me! Send me my father here. Set his spirit free!" It's implied in the movie this magical chant causes Colin's father to dream about returning home, which he does forthwith. Father and son are reconciled and the ending is a happy one.

I have the book The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (given to me in 1974 by my paternal grandparents for Christmas). I wanted to reread parts of it to see how closely the movie followed the original work. And I learned something that troubled me. The magic song that Colin wants to sing is not a chant ... it's the Doxology. You know, the song that congregants sing in church after the offering has been collected?

Written by Thomas Ken in 1674, it's the the last stanza of the hymn Awake My Soul and With The Sun. It was written for personal devotion singing, since hymns not taken verbatim from Scripture were forbidden in worship during this time. Now ironically, this stanza is not only sung in worship but in thousands of churches every single Sunday!

The magic in the story is praise of the Father. In the story, Colin is taken by the song and loves that Dicken learned it in church. I find when songs are repetitively sung as part of a Sunday service, people can lose passion in worship. But in January I heard the organist at my mother's church play The Doxology (which means "saying glory") as an introductory piece, adding dynamics and volume each subsequent time she played it. By the end, I had the chills and tears streaming down my cheeks. It was the most powerful version of the song I'd ever heard and I felt praise welling within me.

Do you know how important praise of our Father is? We want to make sure you know. It's so important that it's the first thing Jesus says in The Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:9-10 during the Sermon on the Mount: "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven." That whole part is praise. Interestingly, when I was walking Friday morning, two different songs on my Ipod which feature words from that prayer came on in a row: Manifesto by The City Harmonic and a melody by Michael O'Brien. Both are powerful moving renditions, both songs serving in the praise capacity. Praise of our Father should be number one on our list of things to do. Praising Him for not just what He does, but who He is!

• Psalm 145:1-2 says, "Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being." 
• Psalm 86:12 say, "I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever."
• Exodus 15:2 says, "The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him." 
• Psalm 35:28 tells us how often we should praise: "Then my tongue shall tell of your righteousness and of your praise all day long."
• In the book of Revelation, the angels sing, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."

In your marriage, we want praise of God our Father to be your desire. If everything you do as a couple, or as individuals stems from praise to our Father, everything else should fall neatly in to place. Praise produces obedience, obedience produces righteousness, and with righteousness comes an overabundance of love for God, His children and creation. That's the kind of praise we want you to have.
 
In the book The Secret Garden, Colin says after hearing The Doxology, "I like it. Perhaps it means just what I mean when I want to shout out that I am thankful to the Magic ... Perhaps they are both the same thing." Not perhaps, but most certainly. Amen.

Discussion: See if you can write down or say a sentence of praise to God about who He is verses what He does. What are somethings you see that cause you to burst into praise? What are some ways of praising God? How can praise of God be beneficial to your marriage?

Prayer: Father, you are glorious and almighty. Love for you fills our hearts and bursts forth in song! Holy, holy, holy are you! We rejoice in you! We love, praise and adore you and step forward this day to make your name known. In Christ, Amen.