Sing of My Redeemer (Hymns Reborn)

by Don Chapman

The weeks after Easter are some of the hardest set lists to plan. The big day is over, but the message isn’t! You need something that holds the weight of the resurrection without feeling like a repeat of Sunday.

That’s exactly where “Sing of My Redeemer” fits. It’s my new melody of the classic hymn “I Will Sing of My Redeemer.” I didn’t want to write something that only worked on Easter morning. I wanted to write something that could carry a congregation out of Easter and into the weeks that follow, into spring, into summer, into ordinary Sundays that still need resurrection truth.

A Hymn That Almost Didn’t Survive

In December of 1876, Philip Bliss and his wife Lucy boarded a train headed to Chicago. Bliss was one of the most prolific hymn writers of his era. He wrote the tune to “It Is Well with My Soul.” He wrote “Hallelujah, What a Saviour!” He was 38 years old and at the peak of his ministry.

He never made it to Chicago.

As the train crossed a bridge in Ashtabula, Ohio, the bridge collapsed. The carriages plunged into an icy ravine and caught fire. Some later accounts suggest that Bliss managed to get free of the wreckage but wouldn’t leave without his wife, who was still trapped — so he stayed with her as the fire closed in. It’s a powerful story, though it lives more in devotional tradition than in verified historical record.

Here’s what did survive: a trunk. Inside that trunk, Bliss’s friends found the lyrics to a hymn he had just written. He had finished the words but never got around to composing a melody. The hymn was “I Will Sing of My Redeemer.” James McGranahan later wrote a tune for the text, and it became one of the first hymns ever recorded on Thomas Edison’s phonograph.

Sing, O sing of my Redeemer!
With his blood he purchased me;
on the cross he sealed my pardon,
paid the debt, and made me free.

I was so inspired by that story that I wrote a brand new melody as a tribute to Bliss and those incredible lyrics. I call it “Sing of My Redeemer,” and it’s part of my Hymns Reborn series.

A Congregation-Driven Song

From the beginning, I knew this arrangement needed to be congregationally driven.

This is not one for worship drums. It is built on voices, the gathered church. The kind of singing that feels less like performance and more like proclamation.

I wanted the arrangement to leave room for people to actually sing. To breathe. To mean the words. And especially on the bridge, I wanted the voices to carry it.

Worship leaders put a great deal of prayer and energy into Easter Sunday, and they should. But Easter is not meant to be celebrated once and then packed away with the stage design. We do not move on from the resurrection. We keep singing it, and we keep remembering what Christ has done on the cross and what His victory means for us now.

That is why “Sing of My Redeemer” feels to me like a true “afterglow” Easter song. It recalls Easter and commemorates it, letting the church stay in that holy light a little longer. The original text itself keeps returning to the cross, the ransom Christ gave, the pardon He secured, and the freedom He won.

My hope for “Sing of My Redeemer” is very simple. I hope it gives pastors, worship leaders, and congregations a song for the Sundays after Easter. A song that honors a beloved hymn text while offering the church a fresh way to sing it. A song that works all year long because the message never goes out of season.

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