A couple weeks ago, one of the hymns in church was "God Loved the World So That He Gave," and I noticed an interesting feature in "Just as I Am, without One Plea," which is on the opposite page (such a discovery is one of the reasons I continue to use the hymnal even though the hymn texts appear in the bulletin).
At first, I noticed only that each verse begins with "Just as I am" and that this is an example of anaphora, but then I realized its significance. That this phrase is repeated at the beginning of each verse illustrates our incapacity to change and to turn from our sinful human nature. We were born into sin and cannot free ourselves from it.
