O Lord our God, how majestic is your name

Phil Lawson Johnston’s 3-stz song with refrain is dated 1982, and reached the ‘Spring Harvest’, MP and Songs of Fellowship series of books soon afterwards. It draws on the words of the messianic Psalm 2 and Psalm 8, linked with Revelation 5 in a way characteristic of the ‘throne’ language of its generation. The echo of Colossians 1:17 in stz 3, applied here to the ‘Lord our God’ rather than to Christ, is a less common feature. This should not be confused with Michael Baughen’s 1972 version of Psalm 8 which begins with the same 9 words, adapted from the RSV and NIV text of v1. That text also includes both the status of man and the praising children, neither of which are mentioned here. The tune O LORD OUR GOD, HOW MAJESTIC IS YOUR NAME was composed with the words by the same writer.

b London 1950. Eton Coll (where his songwriting began), and Inchbald Sch of Design (History of Art). From 1971 he has worked as a self-taught professional glass-engraver; from 1972, when he experienced a filling of God’s Spirit ‘which launched me into writing songs for Jesus’, he led the worship-group ‘Cloud’, with a leading part at Holy Trinity Ch Brompton. From 1988 to 2002 he was a p/t leader at St Aldate’s Oxford, then transferring to St Andrew’s; periodically he speaks and leads worship for other groups and conferences in UK and USA. He has recorded 7 albums with Cloud and 4 solo ones to date, and an ‘accessible’ series of hymns and songs, Worship in the Room, for small groups with no other music. 15 of his 100 or so songs appear in Spring Harvest collections, MP, The Source etc. With Shelagh Brown he compiled Value Me (stories of people who had rediscovered their worth through the love of God), and in 2004 he published his partly autobiographical The Song of the Father’s Heart. He works from home in N Oxford, and his glass engravings have been exhibited annually in London and more recently in the USA; he aims ‘to create on glass designs that…reflect in some way the care and detail of the Creator that we observe in the world around us’. Nos.192, 304, 569.