hymns

When I was little I used to believe that thunder was God moving his furniture, when it rained God was crying, when it snowed God was mopping his floors and lightning was the light switch going on and off in heaven.

Lina

I use to think the known Christmas song "in excelsis deo" was en chelsea's dayo

Mike Simmons

I always wondered why shepherds washed their socks by night. (correct lyric: watched their flocks)

MaggieNJ

I used to believe that Hosianna was a character from the Bible because of the line "Hosianna, Son of David!" in a religious hymn. Unfortunately, the religion class I attended only reinforced this belief: We were told that King David had many different children, and imagining the mysterious Hosianna as a less prominent son among several siblings made a lot of sense to me. It took a couple of years until my father found out about this belief of mine and set me straight.

Mary

In the first verse of the Harvest Festival hymn "Come ye thankful people, come" there is a line that reads "All be safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin". For a long time I thought that meant "Everyone be safely gathered indoors, before the winter storms begin". Only recently did I find out that it refers to crops, rather than to people!

Alan, Sheffield

When I was little, I thought the lyrics for silent night. "so tender and mild" was referring to baby Jesus like he was a piece of meat. I was really confused as to why they were going to eat Jesus.

Anon

My brother and I are preacher's kids, so we were at church all the time. I was very gullible and my brother was very mischievous and in the hymn "Jesus is a Rock in a Weary Land," my brother told me the lyrics were "Jesus threw a rock and away he ran!" Then he went into this big explanation about how in olden times people were stoned to death for doing bad things, and if I wasn't good, Jesus was going to throw a rock at me. I think my brother was a religious terrorist.

Janie

In our baptst church we sing a song entitled "Trust and Obey".  The lyrics in one of the verses say "as we walk by His side IN THE WAY".  We always laugh because it sounds like we are holding up progress.  WE'RE IN THE WAY!  Boy that speaks volumes doesn't it!

choir director in the south.

In about the 7th grade my friends and I would never be able to make it through church with a straight face whenever the congregation sang the hymn "Lead On Oh King Eternal". It always sounded like they were singing "Lead On, Oh Kinky Turtle." - Still makes me laugh!

Beckiboo

I always wondered what a "sino" was in "Jesus loves me the sino..."

Dan

I was raised Catholic, and one of the hymns we used to sing at communion contained the line, "You satisfy the hungry heart with gift of finest wheat." For the longest time, I thought that it was "You satisfy the hungry FOX," and I couldn't figure out why a fox would be satisfied with wheat. Surely foxes didn't really eat wheat!

Kristin

I took "Gods got the whole world in his hands" a little too literally. I believed if we dug too deeply into the earth we would reach God's hand...oh and the sky was a handkerchief or a blanket to keep us warm.

Apple

We sang a hymn/religious song (I think it was more modern than a hymn judging by the informal lyrics) at school with the line "who made Earth and Mars?" This always annoyed me because the Bible says God made Earth, but has no mention of the other planets. I had also learnt from science books that the planets were formed naturally with no influence from God. So whenever we sang the hymn, I wouldn't say the words "and Mars", because I knew God had nothing to do with making it.

HB