Do you entertain angels in your heart? You may be doing that when you sing a hymn. The Epistle to the Colossians discloses an unexpected dimension to hymn singing when it highlights singing as a form of instruction and correction: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord." Col. 3:16. So a hymn's angel message directs and corrects as it protects.
It is exactly in this way that the Christ brings its "Peace, be still" and "Be of good cheer" to silence the tempests brewing in public affairs, or in home and office situations—not to mention teapots! God endows man as His likeness with all the serenity and joy of Soul. The angels in hymns are God's thoughts, bringing their healing message directly and spontaneously into our experience. This is happening when we sing a hymn or when a hymn goes on singing in us. In a sense, then, the hymns themselves come as angels.
Hymns as angels? Like the psalms, many of the hymns in the Christian Science Hymnal emerge out of struggle and victory in the poet's experience. Each hymn is the lyrical shape of a spiritual concept. And like the psalm, the hymn so often contains within its scope the statement of both crisis and solution.
