When I wrote a couple weeks ago about one of my favorite hymns, "For All the Saints", several of you wrote back with your own favorites or sharing your love for mine. (For some reason readers of this blog seem to prefer to comment in personal e-mails or on Facebook rather than on the blog itself. I guess they are shy. Or maybe FB feels more personal. Who knows? I’m just glad when you tell me what you think!) My sister mentioned #3 and #7 in InterVarsity's Hymns, which we used in family worship growing up. She didn’t bother to give their titles. She assumed I too would remember them from the numbers. She sent me back, thumbing through the slim blue volume on the shelf by the piano, reading favorite after favorite and remembering precious times of worship.
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I woke this morning with this hymn going through my head. It’s an old favorite going back to the summer at Cedar Campus in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan when I met my husband. Cedar Campus is an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship training camp and mostly we sang from the organization’s Hymns, a collection I knew so well from family devotions that I could tell you number 27, number 36 or, my favorite, number 55, without looking. But that summer we also sang from a British hymnal, Christian Praise and “For All the Saints” became our theme song. So how many New Year's resolutions have you broken so far? I wasn't brought up to make New Year's resolutions. My parents taught me that if something was right to do, I should start now. If it was wrong, I should not wait for January 1 to stop. They had a good point, but the fact is that for many of us the new year is a time of thinking back over the past twelve months, noticing things we wish we had done differently and planning how to improve. As my husband and I approach retirement in a couple years, I find myself thinking back farther than the past year. Those of us who gre up in the United States all know the first verse of "America, the Beautiful", which tells of the physical beauties of this land from amber waves of grain to purple mountain majesties. But the powerful words of some of the other verses speak of spiritual qualities that Americans traditionally valued. O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife. Who more than self their country loved And mercy more than life! It's good to be home. The picture is Fort McHenry, whose resistance to attack during the War of 1812 inspired the Star Spangled Banner. Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. --Francis Scott Key |
AuthorLeAnne Hardy has lived in six countries on four continents. Her books come out of her cross-cultural experiences and her passion to use story to convey spiritual truths in a form that will permeate lives. Add http://www.leannehardy.net/1/feed to your RSS feed.
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