God Shed His Grace on Thee

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.  --Psalm 33:12

When iconic soul music singer and composer Ray Charles recorded America the Beautiful in 1972, he borrowed from his roots in jazz and gospel music.  By the time Charles gets to the refrain, he begins adding words.  "America," he sang, "America, God done shed His grace on Thee."

Now, if you are a wordsmith, or a traditionalist, or a grammar nazi, you might notice that the tense is changed by his slipping the word "done" into the text.  "Done" is past tense, as in already accomplished.  More on this later.

When Wellesley College English professor Katharine Lee Bates penned the lyrics to this great national hymn in the late 1890's, the tense she used is an implied future tense.  "God shed His grace on thee," was meant to be a blessing--may God bestow His abundant grace on you, now and in the future.  For centuries English-speakers have evoked this blessing whenever they parted ways.  "Good-bye" is a shorthand phrase for "God be with ye".  Implicit in this sentence is the hope that God will bestow His grace and mercy upon you until we meet again.

Now back to the jazz-gospel version that Ray Charles sang.  His addition of the past participle of the verb "to do" acts as a statement of fact and of faith that many people forget.  God has already blessed us.  "His divine power has given unto us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that has called us to His glory and goodness." (2 Peter 1:3).  It's a done deal.  Through the death and resurrection of His only Son (John 3:16), God has already shed His grace on us, all that we need.  We need no more than that.  Yes, Ray, God done already shed His grace on us.  Hallelujah!

Yet He keeps on giving.  "And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:19).  Jesus taught us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread."  Yesterday is past.  Tomorrow, "this day" becomes a new need that only He can fill.  This is our future hope.

Ray Charles, who I am sure was never thought of as a theologian, taps into this future blessing when he sang the phrase, "And crown thy good with brotherhood."  Charles interjected the phrase "He told me He would" into this line before the words "with brotherhood".  Grammatically, "would" is the past-tense form of "will", but in this case it is used in the future tense.  If you are writing about past events, you can use it to indicate something that was in the future at that point in time.  In other words, you use "would" to preserve the future aspect when talking about the past.

God promised a future blessing, a glorious grace-giving, to all who believe in Him, who are called according to His name.  This promise gives us a hope and a future.  The Bible begins in Genesis with God surveying all of His creation and calling it good.  Jesus declared the act of redemption complete when He uttered the phrase "It is finished" from the cross.  We did not come into existence until after the fact, after all the groundwork had been laid for our blessing, both now and in the future.  We have had, we have, and we will have all the blessings that we will ever need in Him.  "He told me He would" indeed!

We need His grace now more than ever.  May the good that we accomplish as "one nation under God" result in a righteous brotherhood of believers through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord.  All else is wood, hay and stubble, and will be burned up in the end.

International evangelist, speaker, and Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias (who is considered a theologian), shared this hymn from 1719 by Isaac Watts, with a fourth stanza written by Ravi Zacharias.

Our God, our Help in ages past,
Our Hope for years to come,
Our Shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal Home!

Under the shadow of Thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless years the same.

We need thee now as ne’er before,
We mourn the wisdom gone;
Transform our land forevermore—
Redemption through your Son.

Read Ravi's full reflection on his blog: http://rzim.org/global-blog/the-soul-of-america ‪#‎IndependenceDay‬