How Sweet & Awful Is the Place

I recently bought the Together for the Gospel Live 2008 music CD last month and am loving it! I'm preparing myself to go to T4G 2010 and can hardly wait. By the way, if you're going, let me know. I'd love to see you there. Back to the CD...

One hymn in particular has been ministering to me: How Sweet & Awful Is the Place by Isaac Watts. It envisions the bride of Christ gathering around the heavenly table eating the feast of the Lamb and praising God. I keep coming back to this one stanza.

Why was I made to hear thy voice
And enter while there's room
When thousands make a wretched choice
And rather starve than come?

I will never understand why God has chosen to love a sinner such as me. There is nothing good in me that would cause God to love me. Nothing! I can only rely on Deuteronomy 7:7-8. He loves me because he loves me.

Hope you enjoy the song. The lyrics are below

How sweet and awful is the place
With Christ within the doors
While everlasting love displays
The choicest of her stores.

While all our hearts and all our songs
Join to admire the feast
Each of us cry with thankful tongues,
"Lord, why was I a guest?"

"Why was I made to hear thy voice
and enter while there's room,
When thousands make a wretched choice
And rather starve than come?"

'Twas the same love that spread the feast
that sweetly drew us in;
Else we had still refused to taste
and perished in our sin

Pity the nations, O our God,
Constrain the earth to come;
Send thy victorious Word abroad
and bring the strangers home.

We long to see thy churches full,
that all the chosen race
may with one voice and heart and soul
sing thy redeeming grace.