This page is provided so that you can hear the tunes of items which we use in church. Mostly they are written by the vicar. Please note that they are copyright - we are very happy to give permission to you to use them, but we would like to hear about it. Please include any use on your Christian Copyright Licence returns.
Down this page:
- the words,
- the story,
- the sheet music,
- media player.
Isaiah's vision
Isaiah's vision
In the_accession year
I saw the Lord appear:
high and lifted up,
and his train filled the temple.
Around him were flying
the seraphim crying:
"Holy! Holy! Holy Lord!"
All the thresholds were shaken
and the house filled with smoke.
"Woe is me! I am ruined
at a single stroke.
For my lips are unclean,
and I represent a people steeped in sin."
Then to cleanse my soul
a seraph bore a coal,
taken using tongs
from the fire on the altar.
Towards me he turned,
and touched my lips and burned,
and thus atoned for all my sin.
"Who will go to the people
and proclaim what I say?
Who to send?" was the question
from the Lord, that day.
"Here am I," I replied,
"I am willing, if you send me I'll not hide."
So at God's command
I came to understand
how the Lord has called
and commissioned his servant.
I'll speak out today
the words I hear him say,
for he is holy! Holy! Holy Lord!
Words and tune copyright © John Hartley 2007.
Based on Isaiah 6.
Story behind the song
The ideas for this song came to me as I was wrestling with how to explain Isaiah's vision for a school assembly for a local primary school. People who write "collective worship" materials say that we all have a sense of the numinous, and part of the function of such an occasion should be to give us each an opportunity to imagine what it must have been like for Isaiah to witness such a vision, and how it transformed his life. In the event I used the song "We see the Lord" (words and tune anon, arranged by Betty Pulkingham - Mission Praise 736), but I would really have liked a song which went on to explore Isaiah's conviction of sin, his restoration by the seraph, and his call to ministry. This song was the result.
A note on pronunciation: the underscore_ in the first line is an elision marking, so the "e" of "the" is run into the "a" of "accession" making a combination which sounds like "In thyac-cess-ion ...". And whereas the word seraph has its stress on the first syllable, the Hebrew pronunciation of the plural seraphim has two strong syllables at the end but the initial "se" is weak, and so the stress in the word falls on the middle syllable "raph". Maybe this helps to emphasis the unworldly and alien nature of Isaiah's experience?
John Hartley.
Windows Media Player. When you click the left-hand "play" button your computer should have started to play the tune. If it didn't, you might be able to get the tune by clicking here, or by right-clicking the link, choosing "save target as", saving it onto your computer, and then opening it with a music-playing program.
Please remember that a midi file of a tune isn't supposed to be a state-of-the-art musical arrangement - it is only supposed to give a basic idea of how the tune goes. Any reasonable organist / keyboard player / music group could make it sound far better.