In the classic Radio 4 comedy show ‘I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue’, there is a game in which panellists (with varying musical abilities!) are asked to sing one familiar song to the tune of another, with hilarious and unexpected results. At my theological college, at the end of term revue, this was adapted to apply to hymn tunes. Thus, we discovered that ‘Praise, my soul, the king of heaven’ goes quite well to Taylor Swift’s ‘Blank Space’; that ‘All I once held dear’ is a good fit for ‘I Will Survive’, and that the words of the Agnus Dei could have been written to the tune of ‘Baby Shark’. (Don’t expect these to appear in orders of service in the coming weeks!)

The comedy of this lies in making the familiar to be unfamiliar. And in this, there is also a revelation of unexpected resonances within the well-known texts. It is similar to the way that a new outfit or a new haircut can reveal a beauty in someone – beauty that has always been there, but which becomes apparent in this new vesture.

There may be a lesson for us, regarding our lives of prayer. We know that there is something beautiful and very important about familiarity and routine in our prayer lives: having prayers by heart makes it easier to speak from the heart. But if you feel that familiarity is beginning to verge into staleness, I wonder whether it is worth singing one song to the tune of another: for example, you could try using the contemporary version of the Lord’s Prayer, if you’re used to the traditional version. If you like to pray aloud with words, why not try singing your prayers, or going to the other extreme and spending some time just in silence with God? You may find that, in this combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar, you open a new door into God’s presence.