Great is Thy Faithfulness

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! In a week we're going to be halfway through the year. On this last Wednesday of June, I thought it would be a good time to publish a hymn called "Great is Thy Faithfulness." I hope you like this piano cover!


Listen to the song here
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This song isn't as old as some of the other hymns I've played. In fact, it was only written in 1923, around the time of some of the jazz tunes I've played.

You might say that a supposedly "new" song isn't worth listening to. "You know, music these days, it's just not as good as those old days, is it?"

Well, I'd have two things to say to you in that case. First of all, you're probably suffering from a mental bias that makes you think music is worse today. If you look back at the year 1985, for example, you're probably more likely to remember good things. You won't remember all the bad songs because you wouldn't have bothered to listen to them. It would be the good songs that would stay stuck in your head.

However, when you look at 2020, you can see everything that's happening now, so you don't have to rely on your memory. Therefore, since you see a lot of songs that you don't like, you'll assume that music was better in 1985.

You might also end up using this kind of reasoning to say that the world is continually getting worse, or that each summer seems hotter than the last. Things seem worse now because you don't remember all the bad things of the past, but you remember the good things.

Second of all, there's only one way to tell whether a song is valuable, and that's to actually listen to the song yourself. You can't say, "Oh, this song hasn't been played for hundreds of years, so no one would like it," or, "This song is really repetitive - no one would like it," or, "The composer barely spent any time writing this song, so no one would like it." None of those things determine whether the song is actually good or not. They also don't determine the effort or the creativity that the composer put into the song.

A song like this one can still have a timeless message regardless of how long ago it was written or how much effort the composer appeared to put in.

That's why any time is a good time to keep filling your teacup with music!

~Liya