When Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon opened up King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, they found a fascinating stash of highly-treasured items: jewellery, weaponry, gold, furniture, statues and… honey.
Remarkably, after sitting in the tomb for 3,000 years, scientists determined that the honey was almost certainly still edible (although I doubt anyone put their ‘mhoney’ where their mouth was). That’s a long shelf-life.
I sometimes reflect on how wonderful and remarkable it is that you can turn up to a church in 21st-century Britain today and sing songs that were written by Charles Wesley (1707–1788), or Isaac Watts (1674–1748). We gladly sing the eighth-century hymn ‘Be Thou My Vision’, and at Christmas we might sing ‘In Dulci Jubilo’ written at the start of the 1300s. That’s a long shelf-life!
But not all songs have such enduring legacies. Indeed, of the 6,500 hymns that Charles Wesley wrote, only a tiny fraction of them have endured the long passage of time. It is a wonderful and liberating truth that the vast majority of the songs that we sing today will be unknown to the church of coming generations.
Of course, some will endure – and only time will tell which will and which won’t. The Lord, in His kindness, has given us a super-abundance of choice when it comes to songs we can sing today. Each song will have its season, be it long or short, and our job is to choose songs that will serve God’s people today.
As we savour the honey of songs passed down to us from previous generations, and seek to pass on that legacy to the next generation, let’s also thank God for those songs that serve us just for a season – and rejoice in all that He gives us.
