Altogether Lovely (a Sunday Setlist)

This post is part of the Sunday Setlist blog carnival

Today at The Table we sang the classic worship song “Here I Am to Worship.” My favorite lyric in this song is Tim Hughes’ use of the word “altogether.”

You’re altogether lovely, altogether worthy, altogether wonderful to me – “Here I Am to Worship” by Tim Hughes

I wouldn’t have thought to use this word in expressing this idea, maybe because I live in America (writer Tim Hughes is British). I live in Tennessee and we don’t speak like that. This fact would normally be an obstacle, but the lyric works for me because it’s just unique enough to catch my ear, it’s repetition and metric placement stresses the intention of the word, and it sings really well.

You know how we use this word? “All together.” As in, “Dang. I can’t seem to get it all together.” This expresses the frazzled, harried, state we find ourselves trapped in.

Now, for the semanticists out there, I’m aware that “all together” and “altogether” don’t mean the same thing. But the comparison works for me. I can’t get myself together; He is all together. He is altogether all together.

The rest of our set:

1. Beautiful One (Tim Hughes)
2. Cannons (Phil Wickham)
3. You Are Holy (Prince of Peace)
   (Imboden / Rhoton)
4. Where the Sprit of the the Lord Is
   (Tomlin / Nockels / Nockels)
5. King of Glory
   (Powell / Carr / Avery / Lee / Anderson)
6. Doxology
   (to the tune of “All Creatures of Our God and King”)
7. Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy Lord) (Peter Scholtes)
8. You Are Holy God (Cather Carter-Heiser)
9. Here I Am to Worship (Tim Hughes)