June 30, 2019

Each week, you may find information here about the music in the traditional worship services at First United Methodist Church in Lewisville, Texas.  Some of this information is original; much of it is "borrowed" from other sources such as Wikipedia, GBOD, and hymnary.org.  It is my hope that this information will enhance your understanding and enrich your worship experience.   

About the Organ Music:

Swing Low - Carlton Young

“Swing Low Sweet Chariot” is among the most treasured and widely recognized African American spirituals.  It was placed in the National Archives by the Library of Congress and identified as one of the “Songs of the Century” by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.  It was first recorded by the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1909.  But while the spiritual’s music and lyrics are widely known, the song’s history is a bit cloudy. According to many accounts, “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” was one of the spirituals born from the experience of slaves in the first decades of the 19th century.  Composed by unknown slaves over time and passed orally from community to community, the song allegedly voiced slaves’ hopes that ultimately they would find comfort in a heavenly home.  

Yet some music historians have added another layer to this account of the song’s origins.  They have argued that “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” was one of the spirituals that conveyed a secret meaning to slaves in addition to the story of Elijah and his fiery chariot. Slave spirituals did a lot more than offer a promise of eventual redemption; they also offered specific strategies needed to escape.  For example, “Wade in the Water” taught runaway slaves how to throw off the bloodhounds sent to track them down.  “Follow the Drinking Gourd” provided slaves with an elaborate coded map that would lead them to the North and freedom: the refrain told them to keep their eye on the Big Dipper (the drinking gourd) as the stars marking the edge of its cup pointed to Polaris, the North Star.   According to these historians, “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” was another in this collection of coded spirituals.  In fact, according to some, it was one of Harriet Tubman’s favorites.  The heroic conductor on the Underground Railroad made her own escape to freedom in 1849.  She returned south the next year to lead her sister and her two children north.  Over the next ten years, she made another 18 trips into slave states and escorted an estimated 300 slaves to freedom.  Legend has it that slaves sang “Swing low sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home” to announce that Tubman or another “conductor” would be arriving soon to lead them to freedom.

Yet while Tubman’s heroics were real, not everyone is convinced that the spiritual played a part in her adventures.  In fact, most music historians now believe that the song’s writer is not even unknown.  The composer, “Uncle Wallis” Willis, was a slave in Mississippi before the Civil War.  But his owner was not your typical Southern planter—Britt Willis was a Choctaw Indian.  Britt Willis was among the Choctaws forced to move west, and he took his slaves, including Wallis, with him.  In the Oklahoma Territory, Britt succeeded in rebuilding his life on a large plantation near Doaksville, and it is quite possible that Wallis wrote “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” while living as a slave there.  Ironically, though, the song circulated first among young Choctaw boys, not among slaves.  Britt hired Wallis out to the Spencer Academy, a Choctaw boys’ school, and this song was one of several that that Wallis sang to entertain the students.  In fact, according to some accounts, the song was not widely circulated among African Americans until after the Civil War, when the superintendent of the Spencer Academy, Alexander Reid, shared the song with the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

The song’s power may lie in that it was born in the convergence of two great tragedies within American history: the horrors of African slavery and the injustice of Native American removal. Its prayer that someday the singers would find a resting place could as easily speak to one mistreated people as the other.

Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home.
Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home.

I looked over Jordan, and what did I see, Coming for to carry me home,
A band of angels coming after me, Coming for to carry me home.

If you get there before I do, Coming for to carry me home,
Tell all my friends I'm coming, too, Coming for to carry me home.

I'm sometimes up and sometimes down, Coming for to carry me home,
But still my soul feels heavenly bound, Coming for to carry me home.

The brightest day that I can say, Coming for to carry me home,
When Jesus washed my sins away, Coming for to carry me home.

If I get there before you do, Coming for to carry me home,
I'll cut a hole and pull you through, Coming for to carry me home.

Carlton R. Young (b. 1926), was born in Hamilton, Ohio and served in the Air Force during World War II. A teacher, editor, composer and conductor, has the unique distinction of serving as editor of two revisions of hymnals for Methodists: The Methodist Hymnal, 1966; and The United Methodist Hymnal, 1989. Dr. Young, known to his friends as "Sam", has served on the faculties and directed graduate studies in church music at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University; and Scarritt College; and is emeritus Professor of Church Music at Candler School of Theology, Emory University. He is a Past-President and Fellow of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada and the first American to be named an honorary member of The British Methodist Church Music Society. He is the author of  Music of the Heart: John and Charles Wesley on Music and Musicians (1995).  Founder of the Agape catalog for Hope, he has a choral series of anthems (The Carlton Young Choral Series) to his credit and continues to write and compose.

Toccata - Georgi Mushel

Born in Tambov, Russia, Georgi Mushel (1906-1989) studied piano at the Moscow Conservatory, then he taught piano and composition at the Conservatory of Tashkent. Mushel composed an opera, four ballets, a cantata, three symphonies, six piano concertos, chamber music, vocal works, film music, organ preludes as well as a series of fugues on Uzbek themes and melodies.  It is to be noted that in Georgi Mushel’s work, painting went along with music, not as a distraction from the latter, but as a source of inspiration.  As he wrote the music for the film entitled "The Cotton Season", he painted both "Faraway Morning" and "November". Similarly, during the staging of the ballet "The BALLERINA", he painted "The Dance of Spring”.

Before Mushel, Uzbek music was generally devoted to local folklore. But through many of his compositions, he contributed to the development of classical music in Uzbekistan. The Toccata, which is derived from an Uzbek three-movement suite, includes an aria and fugue and is one of the few organ works of the author which have been published.

About the Piano Music:

Chariots of Fire - Vangelis

"Chariots of Fire" is an instrumental theme written and recorded by Vangelis for the soundtrack of the 1981 film of the same name. Vangelis won an Academy Award for Best Original Score.  This main theme reached the top of the American Billboard Hot 100 chart and was used as the background music at the London 2012 Olympics winners' medal presentation ceremonies.

Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou (b. 1943), known professionally as Vangelis, is a Greek musician and composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, and orchestral music. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning score to Chariots of Fire, also composing scores for the films Blade Runner, Missing, Antarctica, The Bounty, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and Alexander, and the use of his music in the PBS documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan.

Vangelis began his career working with several popular bands of the 1960s such as the Forminx and Aphrodite's Child. Throughout the 1970s, Vangelis composed music scores for several animal documentaries, including L'Apocalypse des Animaux, La Fête sauvage and Opéra sauvage; the success of these scores brought him into the film scoring mainstream. In the early 1980s, Vangelis formed a musical partnership with Jon Anderson, the lead singer of progressive rock band Yes, and the duo went on to release several albums together as Jon & Vangelis.

About the Choral Music:

Elijah Rock - Jester Hairston

What is the “rock” in “Elijah Rock”?  There are some pretty convoluted ideas, but there seems to be one answer that makes the most sense. The fact that there are several versions of the lyrics and the idea seems somewhat truncated mark this as a genuine folk song, passed down orally for a number of years.

“Comin’ up, Lord,” has to refer to Elijah’s being taken up to Heaven in a fiery chariot.  Another line that seems clear is “If I could, I surely would just stand on the rock where Moses stood.” Moses is actually associated with several rocks in the desert, two of which gushed forth water for the Israelites. I think, though, that the rock referred to here is Mount Nebo, which Moses climbed right before his death: “There the Lord showed him the whole land. . . . and said to him, “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Deuteronomy 34:1, 4). Many spirituals had a double meaning, one spiritual and one temporal, and Canaan is often a reference to freedom on earth as well as to Heaven.

“Satan’s a liar and a conjur too/If you don’t mind out he’ll conjur you” is pretty self-explanatory. The idea of Satan’s being a liar is straight from Scripture; one verse is from the Gospel of John 8:44: “When he lies, he speaks his own language; for he is a liar and the father of lies.” So if you don’t mind, or look, out, he’ll cast a spell on you.

But the “rock”?  One rather dubious idea is that the rock referred to is Elijah’s chariot, so called because of its rocking motion as it travels. There are two other possible meanings for “rock.” One is that it refers to Mount Carmel, where Elijah had the contest with the prophets of Baal. The other possibility is a more figurative one, and the one that makes the most sense. Additional lines from other versions clearly reference the idea that the rock is God: “But I can tell this ol’ world/He been a rock and a shelter for me.”  Now the symbolism makes sense. God is a rock for the speaker in the song, just as He was for Elijah. The speaker is looking forward to “comin’ up” to Heaven just like Elijah. The “shouts” are shouts of joy, something that happens all through the Bible, one of the most beautiful being in the book of Job when God says: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? . . . while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” (38:4, 7).

This arrangement is by the famed African-American composer and arranger Jester Hairston (1901-2000), who was the grandson of slaves.  He was regarded as a leading expert on Negro spirituals and choral music.

Hairston was still a small child when his father died in a job-related accident; he was raised by his grandmother while his mother went to work.  While growing up, Hairston heard his grandmother and her friends talking and singing about life on the plantations of the southern US. He listened with immense interest and made a promise to himself that he would preserve this history through music.

Hairston initially in landscape architecture at Massachusetts Agricultural College in the 1920s. Hairston became involved in various church choirs and choral groups. The accompanist of one, Anna Laura Kidder, saw his potential in music and became his benefactor. Mrs. Kidder offered him financial assistance to study music at Tufts University, from which he graduated in 1929. He was one of the first black students admitted to Tufts. Later he studied music at the Juilliard School.  He sang with the Hall Johnson Choir in Harlem for a time but was nearly fired from the all black choir because he had difficulty with the rural dialects that were used in some of the songs. He had to shed his Boston accent and relearn the country speech of his parents and grandparents. Johnson had told him, "We're singing ain't and cain't and you're singing shahn't and cahn't and they don't mix in a spiritual.”  The Hall Johnson Choir performed in many Broadway shows including The Green Pastures. In 1936, they were asked to go to Hollywood to sing for the film The Green Pastures. At that time, a Russian composer, Dimitri Tiomkin, heard Jester and invited him to collaborate with him. This led to a thirty-year collaboration during which time Jester arranged and collected music for the movies. 

In 1961, the US State Department appointed Jester Hairston as Goodwill Ambassador. He traveled all over the world teaching and performing the folk music of the slaves. In the 1960s he held choral festivals with public high school choirs, introducing them to Negro Spiritual music, and sometimes leading several hundred students in community performances. His banter about the history of the songs along with his engaging personality and sense of humor endeared him to many students.  In 1985 he took the Jester Hairston Chorale, a multi-racial group, to sing in the People's Republic of China, at a time when foreign visitors were still quite rare in that country.

Elijah Rock, Shout, shout!  Elijah Rock, Comin’ up Lord.

Satan’s a liar an’ a conjur, too,  If you don’t mind out, he’ll conjur you.

If I could, I surely would just stand on the rock where Moses stood.

About the Hymns:

Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above

Philip Spener became the pastor of a Lutheran congregation in Frankfurt am Main in the mid-1600s, and effected a revival by fervent preaching that emphasized repentance, personal piety, and discipleship.  He encouraged prayer and Bible study as a means to personal spiritual growth.  He spelled out his five guiding principles in a document entitled Pia Desideria (Pious Desires).  These included: the increased use of scripture; lay participation in small groups, emphasizing prayer and Bible study; a balance of faith and actions; an emphasis on a pious clergy; sermons that encourage an active faith. Not only did the church that Spener was serving in Frankfurt prosper, but a pietistic movement swept across Germany through his influence.

An enthusiastic member of Spener's congregation was a young attorney, Johann Jakob Schutz, who not only encouraged Spener's work but also wrote hymns.  He wrote "Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above" in 1675, and published it in Christliches Gedenkbüchlein that same year.  

The hymn is usually sung to the tune, "Mit Freuden Zart" ("With great delight!").

The most common English translation in use is by Frances E. Cox from 1864, which was published in Orby Shipley's Lyra Eucharistica and her own Hymns from the German.  Deuteronomy 32:3 was the basis for this hymn of praise – “For I will proclaim the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God!” (ESV) Using a variety of metaphors for God and for His works, this text overflows with proclamations of God's loving care for His people.  Note the second verse, which emphasizes the presence of the Lord, a typical pietistic emphasis:  "The Lord is never far away, but thru all grief distressing an ever-present help and stay, our peace and joy and blessing.”

Here I Am, Lord

Dan Schutte is a native of Wisconsin, who received his education at St. Louis University with a bachelor’s degree in 1973, a master of divinity degree in 1979 at the Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley, Calif., and a master’s degree in 1980 at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.  Following graduation, Mr. Schutte joined the Jesuits and served as the director of liturgy at Marquette University (1982-1986). He entered parish ministry in Milwaukee serving as director of music at Immaculate Heart of Mary and then Our Lady of Lourdes parishes.   He is currently director of music at the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution, and tours extensively as a Christian concert artist. Of his many hymns, “Here I Am, Lord” is the most commonly sung.

A salient feature of Catholic renewal hymnody since the Second Vatican Council is a stirring and memorable refrain. “Here I Am, Lord” recalls immediately Isaiah 6:8: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’”

An unusual attribute of this hymn is the change in point of view that the singer makes between the stanzas and the refrain. The stanzas speak from the perspective of God in the first person singular, while the refrain, though remaining in first person, is from the perspective of the singers of the hymn offering their lives to God.   Each stanza reflects a paradox. The powerful God, creator of “sea and sky,” “snow and rain” and “wind and flame” is also the God who hears the “people cry,” bears the “people’s pain” and “tend[s] the poor and lame.”  This is a hymn of transformation. God transforms the darkness into light in stanza one, melts “hearts of stone” with love in stanza two and nourishes the “poor and lame” with the “finest bread”—a clear Eucharistic reference.  Each stanza ends with the question, “Whom shall I send?” Rhetorical questions are very common poetical devices in Christian hymnody, but this is not one of them. The refrain immediately offers the response, “Here I am, Lord.”

First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas

A Community of Everyday People Learning to Love Like Jesus

#joychurch   #lovelikeJesus

June 23, 2019

Each week, you may find information here about the music in the traditional worship services at First United Methodist Church in Lewisville, Texas.  Some of this information is original; much of it is "borrowed" from other sources such as Wikipedia, GBOD, and hymnary.org.  It is my hope that this information will enhance your understanding and enrich your worship experience.   

About the Organ Music:

Speak, Lord, in the Stillness - Don Hustad

"Speak, Lord, in the Stillness" was written by Emily May Grimes Crawford (1864-1927), who was born at Lambeth in Surrey, England. In 1893, she went as a missionary to Pondoland in South Africa, where she married Dr. T. W. W. Crawford, an Anglican minister with the Christian Missionary Society of Kikuyu in British East Africa. While in South Africa, she penned "The Master Comes! He Calls for Thee" in 1896, and these words under the title "The Quiet Hour." They were first published in her 1920 work Unseen Realities. 

The tune (Quietude) was composed by Harold Green (1871-1930).  The son of a minister from Helme near Huddersfield in Yorkshire, England, and also a missionary in Pondoland, Green provided this music for Mrs. Crawford’s words around 1925, about five years before his death on the mission field. The song quickly became a favorite at the Keswick Convention in northern England and appeared in The Keswick Hymnbook of 1936 in England. 

Speak, Lord, in the stillness, While I wait on Thee;
Hushed my heart to listen, In expectancy.

Speak, O blessed Master, In this quiet hour;
Let me see Thy face, Lord, Feel Thy touch of power.

For the words Thou speakest, They are life indeed;
Living bread from heaven, Now my spirit feed!

All to Thee is yielded, I am not my own;
Blissful, glad surrender, I am Thine alone.

Speak, Thy servant heareth, Be not silent, Lord;
Waits my soul upon Thee For the quickening word.

Fill me with the knowledge Of Thy glorious will;
All Thine own good pleasure In Thy child fulfill.

    Like a watered garden, Full of fragrance rare,
    Lingering in Thy presence, Let my life appear.

Don Hustad (1918-2013) was one of the giants of Christian music of the 20th century. Hustad had a distinguished ministry and a life-long profession as a recording artist, composer, arranger, teacher, conductor, hymnal editor, and author.  He began work as staff musician of Chicago's WMBI in the early 1940s, worked with soloist George Beverly Shea on a weekly broadcast called "Club Time," and served for some 20 years as organist for a popular radio broadcast "Songs in the Night." He taught at Olivet Nazarene College in Kankakee, Illinois from 1946 to 1950, at which time Hustad was appointed director of the Sacred Music Department at Moody Bible Institute—a position he held until 1961.  During his 11-year tenure at Moody he developed the Moody Chorale into a superior choral ensemble that achieved fame nationally and internationally.   In 1961 he became Crusade organist for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and directed the Crusader Men Choir in the "Hour of Decision" broadcasts.  His publications include over 100 articles and five books.  Throughout his career, Hustad devoted considerable energy to music arranging and hymnal editing, serving as editorial consultant and musical advisor to Hope Publishing Company. Among his editorial contributions are fourteen hymnals and songbooks, as well as dozens of collections.  In 1989, Hustad was awarded Fellow of the Hymn Society for his outstanding contribution to American hymnody.  In 2008, he was honored by the American Choral Director's Association Southern Division Conference for his contributions to church music. He earned diplomas as an Associate of the American Guild of Organists (AAGO) and a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO), London, UK.

Toccata - Johann Krieger

Johann Krieger (1651-1735) was a German composer and organist, younger brother of Johann Philipp Krieger. Born in Nuremberg, he worked at Bayreuth, Zeitz, and Greiz before settling in Zittau. He was one of the most important keyboard composers of his day, highly esteemed by, among others, George Frideric Handel. A prolific composer of church and secular music, he published several dozen of his works, and others survive in manuscript. However, hundreds more were lost when Zittau was destroyed by fire in 1757, during the Seven Years' War.

Krieger's keyboard music places him among the most important German composers of his time. The two published collections, Sechs musicalische Partien (1697) and Anmuthige Clavier-Übung (1698), contain harpsichord suites, organ toccatas, fugues, ricercars, and other works. Krieger's contemporaries praised his contrapuntal skill, evident in the extant fugues and ricercars. Johann Mattheson was particularly impressed with Krieger's double fugues, remarking that he knew nobody who surpassed Krieger in this form, except Handel. Handel himself admired and studied Krieger's work, even taking a copy of Anmuthige Clavier-Übung with him to England.

About the Piano Music:

Great God, Your Love Has Called Us - Nancy Raabe

The “best hymn of the 20th century” is how well-known Methodist hymn writer Andrew Pratt describes this hymn.  Written in 1973 (as “Lord God, your love…”) and revised twice since, Brian Wrenn describes his words as “a revisioning (not a replacement) of the central themes of Charles Wesley’s great hymn, ‘And can it be that I should gain’.”  Wren is an internationally published hymn writer. He was ordained in Britain’s United Reformed Church and holds BA and PhD degrees from Oxford University. In 2000 he was appointed the first John and Miriam Conant Professor of Worship at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta. 

Charles Wesley’s verses take up the biblical stories of St Paul and Silas singing and praying in prison (recounted in Acts 16) and of Peter’s deliverance from prison (Acts 12).  Borrowing a single powerful image from that story (“my chains fell off…”), Wesley expresses his awe at divine love and the personal grace Christians may experience despite themselves.  Brian Wren re-thinks Charles Wesley’s images for contemporary worshippers. He uses Wesley’s ideas to help us look beyond personal experience, reinterpreting St Paul’s chains as “social forces” and “powers and systems”. He is highlighting not just personal sin but the social sin of unfair structures and unjust corporate and community actions.

The tune ABINGDON was written by Erik Reginald Routley (1917-1982), an English Congregational minister, composer and musicologist. He was educated at Lancing College and Magdalen and Mansfield Colleges in Oxford. He was chaplain of Mansfield from 1948 to 1959 and then held appointments as minister in Edinburgh and Newcastle before becoming Professor of Church Music at Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey in 1975.

Great God, your love has called us here, as we, by love, for love were made.

Your living likeness still we bear, though marred, dishonored, disobeyed.

We come, with all our heart and mind your call to hear, your love to find.

We come with self-inflicted pains of broken trust and chosen wrong, 

Half-free, half-bound by inner chains, by social forces swept along,

By powers and systems close confined, yet seeking hope for humankind.

Great God, in Christ you call our name and then receive us as your own,

Not through some merit, right or claim, but by your gracious love alone.

We strain to glimpse your mercy seat and find you kneeling at our feet.

Then take the towel, and break the bread, and humble us, and call us friends.

Suffer and serve till all are fed, and show how grandly love intends 

To work till all creation sings, to fill all worlds, to crown all things.

Great God, in Christ you set us free, your life to live, your joy to share.

Give us your Spirit’s liberty to turn from guilt and dull despair

And offer all that faith can do while love is making all things new.

Nancy M. Raabe (b. 1954), has been the pastor at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Marshall WI, since 2018.  Raabe is an energetic and creative leader of Christian worship.  She specializes in incorporating music and the liturgical arts into worship services.  She is known as an empathetic servant leader, an effective preacher, and as a thoughtful teacher for those of all ages.  Pastor Raabe has been successful in developing sound mission-based plans so that her congregations can grow and thrive in a sustainable manner.  Further, Nancy strives to involve her congregation in the activities of the surrounding community.  Pastor Raabe is an author, worship leader, and composer of church music. 

In November 2015, Nancy Raabe received the Award of the Concordia Historical Institute recognizing the importance of her book, Carl Schalk:  A Life in Song, in carrying forward the legacy of the Lutheran Church in this country.  Pastor Raabe's original arrangement of I Dream A World was a finalist for first prize at the 2010 Ithaca College Choral Composition Festival.  Nancy M Raabe was the Communications chair of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians.  She was the founding editor of the Association's newsletter In Tempo, in which appeared her column Prairie View. 

About the Choral Music:

Your Still, Small Voice - Douglas Wagner

Douglas E. Wagner, a native of Chicago, Illinois, is an international recognized composer and arranger. With thirty years as a high school music educator and administrator behind him, Mr. Wagner now devotes all of his time and energy to writing, editing and their allied activities. He is an A.S.C.A.P. award-winning composer, an editor for a major publishing company, and has served several denominations as a church musician.  2,500 titles by Douglas E. Wagner have been published since 1973, included works for choir (sacred and secular), concert band, orchestra, handbell ensemble, organ, piano, instrumental solo, and voice. Fifteen million copies of his music have been sold to date.

“Your Still, Small Voice” sets a text by Charlotte Lee, based on I Kings 19:11-12.

Your still, small voice, Lord, let me hear it,

Your still, small voice in this frantic world.

Your still, small voice, calm my restless spirit;

Speak to me until I find my rest in you.

Your still, small voice, Lord, let me hear it,

Your still, small voice in this troubled world.

Your still, small voice, call my restless spirit;

Speak to me until I find my rest in you.

Lord, I heard you not in the thunder, nor the fire, nor the whirlwind’s blast;

But perhaps in silent wonder, you will touch my life at last.

In the quiet peace of the morning, when the day is fresh and clear,

Speak to me, Lord, I will listen, call to me and I will hear.

About the Hymns:

How Great Thou Art

"How Great Thou Art" is a based on a Swedish poem written by Carl Gustav Boberg (1859–1940) in Sweden in 1885.  “O Store Gud” (O Great God) is a paraphrase of Psalm 8 and has nine verses.  It was sung in the underground church in Sweden in the late 1800s when the Baptists and Mission Friends were persecuted.  Boberg himself gave the following information about his inspiration for this hymn:

It was that time of year when everything seemed to be in its richest colouring;; the birds were singing in trees and everywhere.  It was very warm; a thunderstorm appeared on the horizon and soon thunder and lightning.  We had to hurry to shelter.  But the storm was soon over and the clear sky appeared.  When I came home I opened my window toward the sea.  There evidently had been a funeral and the bells were playing the tune of “When eternity’s clock calling my saved soul to its Sabbath rest”.  That evening, I wrote the song, “O Store Gud”.

Boberg first published "O Store Gud" in the “Mönsterås Tidningen” (Mönsterås News) on 13 March 1886.The poem became matched to an old Swedish folk tune and sung in public for the first known occasion in a church in the Swedish province of Värmland in 1888.   It was soon published in additional hymn collections and was translated into German and Russian.

British Methodist missionary Stuart Wesley Keene Hine (1899-1989)  heard the Russian translation of the German version of the song while on an evangelistic mission to the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine, near the Polish border, in 1931. Upon hearing it, Hine was inspired to create his English paraphrase known as “How Great Thou Art".   According to Michael Ireland, "Hine and his wife, Edith, learned the Russian translation, and started using it in their evangelistic services.  Hine also started re-writing some of the verses --- and writing new verses (all in Russian) --- as events inspired him."  Hine finalized his English translation in 1949

When the Billy Graham team went to London in 1954 for the Harringay Crusade, they were given a pamphlet containing Hine's work.  They worked closely with Hine to prepare the song for use in their campaigns. They sang it in the 1955 Toronto campaign, but it didn't really catch on until they took it to the Madison Square Garden in 1957. According to Cliff Barrows (Dr. Graham's longtime associate), they sang it one hundred times during that campaign because the people wouldn't let them stop.   

George Beverly Shea's recording of the beloved hymn ranks number 204 on the top recordings of the 20th century according to the Recording Industry Association of America.  It was voted the United Kingdom's favourite hymn by BBC's Songs of Praise.^[2] "How Great Thou Art" was ranked second (after "Amazing Grace") on a list of the favorite hymns of all time in a survey by Today's Christian magazine in 2001.

Evangelist Billy Graham indicated: “The reason I like 'How Great Thou Art' is because it glorifies God. It turns Christian’s eyes toward God, rather than upon themselves. I use it as often as possible because it is such a God-honoring song.”

God of the Sparrow, God of the Whale

Jaroslav Vajda (1919-2008) was one of the leading hymn writers in the 20th century and arguably the preeminent Lutheran hymn writer of his day.  Vajda (pronounced vaheeduh) was born in Lorain, Ohio, the son of a Lutheran pastor of Slovak descent. Thoroughly Lutheran, he was educated at Concordia College and Concordia Seminary, and he pastored several bilingual parishes (German and English) in Pennsylvania and Indiana. Jary (as his friends call him) served as the editor of several Lutheran magazines and retired as a book editor from Concordia Publishing House.

Vajda began translating classical Slovak poetry at the age of 18, and his work was published in the United States and Europe. He wrote his first hymn at age 49, followed by more than 225 original and translated hymns that now appear worldwide in more than 60 hymnals. He served Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregations between 1945 and 1976. In 1963, he became the editor of the This Day magazine and later served as book developer/editor for Concordia Publishing House in St. Louis. He served on the Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship that prepared the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978), one of the most important later twentieth-century hymnals. Elected a Fellow of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada in 1988, Vajda has received numerous honorary doctorates validating his contributions to hymn singing.

“God of the sparrow God of the whale” was written as a result of a commission from Concordia Lutheran Church in Kirkwood, Mo., “to compose a hymn text that would provide answers from the users of the hymn as to why and how God’s creatures (and children) are to serve him. The Law of God demands perfect love from every creature; the love of God and the Gospel coax a willing response to live as an expression of gratitude.”  A noticeable feature of this hymn is its lack of punctuation and rhyme. To the singer this creates a sense of openness—a text that is not bound by the conventional patterns of poetry. Each of the six stanzas is perfectly balanced: the first two lines of each stanza offer a glimpse into the actions of God in the world and the bond God has with God’s creatures. The last two lines of each stanza ask two rhetorical questions: “How does the creature... ” The lack of a question mark gives one the sense that these questions are not so much expecting an answer as making a statement of profound wonder about the relationship between the Creator and the Creator’s creatures. 

First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas

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