O Sing To God

During the Christmas season, starting December 1, it is a family tradition to haul out the season's movies..one an evening is the limit.

Among the collection are the great classics, as well as lesser 'filler' sorts.  Some are pure entertainment, some silly.  But there are those that do leave a warm and gentle message.

One of those is The Bishop's Wife - the old black and white version, please, Dear Reader..don't mess with the classics, thank you.  While the story line is a bit of a theological stretch and fantasy, it contains so many enjoyable scenes and wise lines of dialog.  

Perhaps, though, is the scene with the boy's choir harmonizing with such simple, gracious beauty.  This song has always thrilled me and this year I had to, once and for all, discover its origin.  

It turns out that it is indeed a hymn of honorable credentials.  It truly is a hymn, though not found in hymnals as such.  It was originally written, it seems, as a motet for women's voices which is why it is so well suited to those of boy sopranos. 

Here then, are the words for the reading and savoring.  Perhaps you will even re-watch this sweet old movie and hear this lovely hymn sung once again - reminding us of the reason why we sing in season and out.


O Sing To God

composed by Charles Gounod Dec. 1, 1885

Words by the Rev. B. Webb

"O sing to God your hymns of gladness
Ye loving hearts your tribute pay
Your Lord is born this happy day
Then pierce the sky with songs of gladness
Disperse the shades of gloom and sadness
The Lord is born this happy day

O sing to God your hymns of gladness
O sing to God your hymns of gladness
Ye loving hearts your tribute pay
Your Lord is born this happy day
Then pierce the sky with songs of gladness
Disperse the shades of gloom and sadness
Your Lord is born this happy day

O sing to God your hymns of gladness
O Word of God for us incarnate
O Word of God for us incarnate
By faith we hear thine angels sing
Thy blessed angels sing their hymns
Thine angels sing of praise to thee their King
We join with them in adoration
We join with them in adoration
We pour to thee our supplication
That Thou would grant us, Lord, salvation

Distresses and Blessings

Dear Reader,

I have been away from posting of late and with reasons good enough to perhaps warrant your forgiveness.  Shortly after my last post, I received news that my First Hero and Last Champion was found to have an inoperable brain mass.  This mass is fast moving and quickly destroying all faculties and abilities in its path.  

Such  news is always devastating.  Even more so, for those of us who have loved this man well.  As my own dear son remarked : how sad he couldn't die as he lived, with poetry.

My dear, brilliant brother lived his entire professional career in the sphere of academia.  When he received his degree in Library Science if I remember correctly, it was one of only six in the nation in those early years. 

He has traveled the world, assisted learning centers, given counsel to governments, been instrumental is establishing museums and their collections.  He has authored books and encouraged generations of students in their pursuits of excellence.  And along the way has been a trusted and encouraging friend to many.

He has been a most kind and loving man in all his relationships, familial and otherwise.  He has rubbed shoulders with the famous and influential yet never lost his delight in telling of receiving his primary education in a one room country school.

As I look around my personal library I realize in very large part it came from him -for birthdays, Christmases and 'just cuz' gifts.  Books and learning have been his life.

For much of our adult lives geography has separated us, yet the childhood bond of siblings only three years apart has never weakened.

While I am prevented from being by his side in these his last days as his world becomes smaller and darkness comes in, my time has been spent, via technology, sending him daily chronicles of our country childhood as shared and remembered.  It has taken constant thought and much writing.  Yet it has been a joy and great privilege.

And here, Dear Reader is the blessing!  Never before have I thought of the astonishing gift that memory is.  Certainly all throughout the scriptures is the call to 'remember' given..remember My Words... My Laws .. My Sabbath .. remember the way in which you have come .. My comforts in the night seasons .. My death till I come ... Remember.  We are called to set up alters of remembrances .. Ebenezers .. noting times and circumstances when our God has drawn near and provided  help, refuge, strength, mercy, love etc.

Remembering and memories are true gifts and reasons for giving thanks. I'm aware too that one of the comforts of old age is the looking back.  Perhaps the reason for the vividness of youthful memories is the comfort it brings in last, difficult days.  Perhaps that too is a gift and not just an evidence of one drifting in ones dotage!

For my brother and me, it has been a treat to call to mind the small things and simple people and godly parents that made up the landscape of our childhood.  This has not been a time to remember the unpleasant, but only  the bright joys and loves and goodnesses.  

It has been a challenge and a stretch to be sure.  It has also given me a reason for my days.  It has given us deeper love and appreciation for the pilgrim path we have traveled.  It has given me a fresh glimpse of the Faithfulness of our God whose goodness and mercy truly has followed us all the days of our lives.  I now have a most detailed relief map of our Faith and that of our parents.

This childhood documentation will continue on until my dear brother's Arrival safe Home.  Then, perhaps, I will more faithfully resume blog writings.  In the meantime, Dear Reader, I have a more pressing claim.  

I know you understand.  And thank you.

   

A rough German peasant perhaps.
A tormented monk, to be sure but one with a heart desperately seeking God and God's Truth.

He was changed through a scripture text.
Martin Luther didn't meet words when he opened the scripture to the book of Romans, he met the Living Word!

"The just shall live by faith...."  That was the text branded on his heart.

God through His Word changed the man Luther and the man Luther changed the course of the Church and the history of the world.

He gave the Word of God in the common language for common folk.
He stood before Pope and Emperor alike defending his right to do so.

Luther gave song to the church, singable hymns loaded with doctrine.
And so much more.


If we in our own strength confide,
our striving would be losing,
Were not the right man on our side,
The Man of God's own choosing.
You ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus it is He,
Lord Sabaoth His name,
From age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.

That was Luther's message, Christ The Man and He our salvation 
by Faith alone, Grace alone, through Scripture alone.

Happy Reformation Day, Dear Reader!

Does life never frighten you with its bleakness, Anne Shirley?

This line from Kevin Sullivan's movie masterpiece often comes to mind when Life crowds in with things heart-rendingly woeful.  Such events so often come in groups swiftly causing our focus to slip from the True.

Of late, there have been several of immense proportions touching the life of our family.  Among them  are those much loved who have chosen to leave the Excellent Way and make shipwreck of their lives leaving incalculable devastation in their wake.  While others find a valiant and productive life of one much beloved slipping from their grasp in a way beyond human control while they can only sit by in bewilderment.

Add to these the daily disappointments and other small-potato losses of the Ordinary and I find myself falling to my knees and pushing my little boat into the stream of scripture.  

Gone are the days when I spin in the why cycle.  "Why" doesn't enter in to the equation.  Whys were settled before the Throne in other such times. But the patchwork cloak of bafflement and the heaviness it brings envelop. Emotion broadsides bringing tears and grief brings on a slowness of pace and thought.

  

There is also a return to the well remembered pain of yet another great family loss but a few short years ago.

Then, as is always the way of Mercy,  glory visits.  For us this season, it is the bringing yet another new little lad into our clan circle.  Babies are always the perfect reminder that there is a Time for all things under Heaven and a continuum and purpose to the days we are given.

Too, there is the reminder that bleakness may seem our lot here in the Shadowland.  Yet the reminder comes that we walk through the Valley of the Shadow.  We are not pitching our tent there. Praise Him.

The eternal God is  [our] refuge and dwelling place,

and underneath are the everlasting arms....

No matter how low the spirits, how deep the despair, underneath even those are the strong arms of the Eternal God, unseen and perhaps even unfelt, yet there.  Always there.  Count on it.  

Again and again, praise Him!

Selah.

________

Anne of Green Gables, the Continuing Story

Deuteronomy 33.27, Amp.

Image of a Jewish cemetery in Prague by Lynnette Austin McMinn  

If I ascend to highest heights;
if the Spirit brings Jesus to me in unaccountable brilliance,
and the glass is wiped clear of the greater part of its darkness,

     Jesus is fairer.

If I am permitted to see what I can only call the beauty of Jesus 

in the saintliest saint,

     Jesus is fairer.

If I happen upon a grand doxology,

in which the best of the poets inscribes with the best of his best,

     Jesus is fairer.

If I could but once speak with the tongues of men and of angels,

fill with a rush of unqualified love,

     

    Jesus is fairer, and the fairest of ten thousand to my soul.

If I could compress the beauties of all God's handiwork

into one transcendent handful,

     Jesus is fairer.

If, in another handful, I could combine Sebastian Bach, Michelangelo,

Brahms, Vermeer, Rembrandt, a heaven full of angel voices,

a world of newly born babies, a galaxy of weavers, potters,

sleight-of-toe ballerinas -

If I could hold these handfuls to my hungry heart and be filled with their glory,

     Jesus is fairer.

Dear Name! 

the rock on which I build,

My shield and hiding-place,

My never-failing treasury, filled

with boundless stores of grace.

Jesus, my Shepherd, Husband, Friend,

My Prophet, Priest and King,

My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End,

Accept the praise I bring.

_______

Johannes Vermeer, "Delft"

Dumbfounded Praying, Harold M. Best, Wifp&Stock Pub., Eugene Oregon

John Newton, Olney Hymns

     

It would cure anybody to walk over the hill every morning 

as I do before sitting down to write, 

with the spruces on either hand and the green meadows beyond.  

I tramp along thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.

~ L. M. Montgomery

The image is of the Willamette Valley, Oregon by Lynnette Austen McMinn

Used by her kind permission.

This may not be LMM's Prince Edward Island, but it the country of my childhood and is deeply fixed in my soul!  Because of that I understand Maud's sentiment.  

We may be kindred spirits, Maud and I.

When it is the one ruling, never-ceasing desire of our hearts, 

that God may be the beginning and end, 

   the reason and motive, 

      the rule and measure, of our doing or not doing, 

         from morning to night; then everywhere, 

            whether speaking or silent,

                whether inwardly or outwardly employed, 

              we are equally offered up to the eternal Spirit, 

             have our life in Him and from Him, 

            and are united to Him by that Spirit of Prayer 

which is the comfort,      

the support,      

the strength and security of the soul, 

travelling, by the help of God, 

through the vanity of time into the riches of eternity. 

Let us have no thought or care, 

but how to be wholly His devoted instruments; 

everywhere, 

and in everything, 

His adoring, 

joyful, and 

thankful servants!

~William Law 1686-1761

_____

Image by Julia Valovich