From insert: "There's something about those old hymns we used to sing in church when I was growing up. I don't hear them much anymore, but when I do, it takes me back. Back to more innocent days, when we (my brothers and my friends and I) would sit in a pew on Sunday morning, trying with everything in us not to snicker or snort during the prayer. I can still hear the offering plates being passed, and the sound of a congregation rising to their feet and sliding hymnals out of the backs of pews.

I remember the secret race I had with everyone in the congregation to be the first to fumble my way to the right hymn. Then straining out the melody, or some harmony part, I never realized that week after week I was repeating and rehearsing such great theology, and it never dawned on me that these hymns were at work in my heart, shaping how I now understand God. I would love to hit rewind on life, and peek in at myself on one of those Sunday mornings.