Review: Nick Law
When I Survey The Wondrous Cross
It's always nice to get an e-mail from someone telling you about a free download. So it was a great pleasure to receive an e-mail from Nick Law saying about a live version of a song that his church St Thomas Crookes in Sheffield have released as a free download to mark the start of Holy Week.
Nick explains, "At St Thomas Crookes, part of our tradition as a church is to gather together on Ash Wednesday, to mark the beginning of the season of Lent, During this year's ashing service, the worship team led the congregation in an acoustic version of Isaac Watts' famous hymn, 'When I Survey The Wonderous Cross', intercut with the refrain of Phil Wickham's poetic 'You're Beautiful'. That evening, the Spirit of God moved powerfully through that song, and we felt it was right and fitting to record a live version."
Before I go on, if you would like a free download of this track, please click this link and get it.
It's always difficult to record a hymn and do it justice, to keep the strong powerful sense of the original song, but also push it forward enough for it to be different in comparison to other versions of the song. I really do think that Nick Law, vocally and on acoustic guitar, leads the song very well. Using the atmospheric sense of the song to really draw out the meaning of Easter and what Jesus did for all of us.
Mixing the song with Phil Wickham's 'You're Beautiful' is a great idea, again another song that talks about Jesus dying on a tree, with the lyrics of "I see you there hanging on a tree, You bled and then You died and then You rose again for me, Now You are sitting on Your heavenly throne, Soon we will be coming home". The transition between the hymn and the Phil Wickham song is strong and seamless.
A superb live version of this classic hymn, with 300 worshippers singing their hearts out about God's love, which is always a powerful thing to hear, led very well by Nick Law and his band. This is a great free track and very much worth downloading.
Review by Jono Davies
LTTM Rating 4 out of 5 Stars
