Holy Week Hymns: My Glorious King in Heaven Crowned

This year, each day of Holy Week, I will post one hymn, with a meditation or explanation afterward.  Some will be hymns I have written; others will be ones I just find meaningful.  I hope you will join me each day, at least to read the hymn if you don't want to take the time for the prose that follows it.

Today, I am sharing the first hymn I wrote about the Crucifixion.

My Glorious King in Heaven Crowned

My glorious king in heaven crowned

Your blood like rubies on the ground

Beneath the bitter cross I kneel

And let your pain my suffering heal

The cock called forth a joyless dawn

The light of lights would soon be gone

Yet from Your dying flame a spark

Would save those crying in the dark

For cleansing waters from Your side

Flowed thick and freely as You died

The separating curtain tore

That we could live with God once more

So as my Savior’s darkest day

My spirit’s shadow purged away

Through all my days on You I’ll call

And at Your nail-scarred feet I’ll fall

I wrote this hymn after my church’s Maundy Thursday service during my first year of hymn writing.  Normally, I have to work on the hymns to get them to sound right, but this one came as soon as I began writing it.  I think it actually began in December of that year, when I was listening to “Oh Holy Night.”  When the choir sang the line “Behold your King,” the image of the cross stood out in my mind.  The baffling idea of a king willingly enduring the crucifixion was so moving that it stuck into my mind until Holy Week, when it inspired the first line of this hymn.