How Great Thou Art

Steven Curtis Chapman keeps this hymn's nineteenth-century language fully intact, and the opening verse builds its argument entirely from creation before mentioning salvation at all: "I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder... when I look down from lofty mountain grandeur." Scale comes before doctrine.

The third verse turns from nature to the cross without transition, and the language gets more personal as it does: "when I think that God, His Son not sparing, sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in." Chapman doesn't smooth over the difficulty of that thought; the hymn admits it's hard to fully absorb.

The psalmist's wonder at a universe that's the work of God's fingers, and Revelation's picture of Christ's return witnessed by every eye, both sit behind a hymn that spends three verses building toward one repeated response — "then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee, how great Thou art." The final verse pictures worship not as a feeling in the present but a promised outcome still ahead.