This week in my series Then Sings My Soul: The Hymns of My Youth I’m adding another familiar hymn — at least, familiar to my youth. “Tell it to Jesus”, written by Edmund S. Lorenz and published in a German hymnal called Frö­liche Bot­schaft­er in 1876. Lorenz came from an Adventist family that emigrated from Russia to America. Educated at Otterbein, Union Biblical Seminary, Yale, and the University of Leipzig, he was ordained and later opened a music publishing company in Dayton, Ohio called Lorenz and Company. The hymn was translated into English in 1880 by Jeremiah E. Rankin.

I haven’t posted much along the theme of Advent during the season this year… quite a departure from what I did last year during Advent. It being already well into the evening now (at least where I’m posting from), I thought I would share some excerpts from the Compline for the third week of Advent taken from my book, That You Might Believe: Praying Advent with the Gospel of John. The book includes some original prayers and many others taken or adapted from a variety of sources, as noted below.

Last year I wrote a piece for Next-Wave on the theme of Advent. We talked a lot about Advent themes last year as I completed my book, That You Might Believe: Praying Advent with the Gospel of John. I’m not sure yet if there are any synchroblogs planned for Advent this year, but I thought I would start taking up the topic a little eary so it doesn’t catch me off-guard like it so often does. Usually the season sneaks up on me before I know it, but this year I’m trying to think ahead. Unless you’re celebrating by the Celtic calendar, of course. In this vein, I thought I’d reprint last year’s Next-Wave article.

Sunday once again brings the time to add another notch in my series Then Sings My Soul: The Hymns of My Youth. This week I’ve selected “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” by William W. Walford (1845) with music by William Bradbury (1861). Walford was a blind preacher in England. On Sep­tember 13, 1845 the lyrics appeared in The New York Ob­ser­ver together with en explanation by Rev. Thomas Salmon, who was pastor of the Congregational Church at Coleshill in 1838 until 1842 when he went to the United States.

A Franciscan Blessing (via)

May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.

For the record, there are twelve days to the Christmastide season… let the feasting continue! We should know this from the famous Christmas carol, yet these days most of us may just scratch our heads as to what, when, and why the twelve days are. It turns out that the 12 days song actually has some relation to a variety of theological themes. Coming to the point thought, we’ve moved out of the Advent season and into the Christmas season. In my Advent book, I have included an extra set of daily offices for use during the Christmas season… kind of a bonus for those who made the purchase. Although the Advent synchroblog has ended, the daily office and the celebration of Christmas go on. The extra office is designed to keep the Christmas themes present in our minds throughout the season. In the book, I introduced it this way:

Happy Christmas to all who’ve visited and/or left a comment here in the past year. Thank-you from me and the ten penguins for your virtual friendship, your support, and for just plain stopping by.

Loving Father,

Help us remember the birth of Jesus, that we may share in the song of the angels, the gladness of the shepherds, and worship of the wise men.

Close the door of hate and open the door of love all over the world. Let kindness come with every gift and good desires with every greeting. Deliver us from evil by the blessing which Christ brings, and teach us to be merry with clear hearts.

This might look a bit like an early edition of my weekly links post, but that’s not what I was going to say. I’ve had many thoughts swirling lately, and have noticed some recurring themes in the blogosphere that I wanted to weigh in on, but I’ve just been busy with other matters. *sigh.* Anyway, I was going to offer thoughts of mustered profundity on many issues…. which have been touched on in several posts I”ve been keeping open in my browser thinking (naievely) that I would get to them. I’ve read some or most of these, but not all… and I’ve lost track of a few related posts on these recurring subjects.

It’s difficult to describe to a non-writer exactly why we write. Somerset Maugham said, “We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.” This makes a lot of sense to me. In my inaugural post here, I said, “We write to know who we are.” Both, I believe, are true. I really never had any idea how deeply I felt the compulsion to write until I started giving in to it, slowly at first. Often I find it easier to write than to read. I mean, I love to read and most people would still consider me an avid reader… I just don’t read that quickly. I’m simply astounded that Julie Clawson could read all of Agatha Christie’s works in just three weeks! (Ah, but Julie, have you read Star Over Bethlehem?) I wish I could read like that. But to write, that’s different. Sometimes — as now — we write in hopes of catharsis. And sometimes — as now — we write in hopes of finding understanding of ourselves and our experiences.

Might as well make it official — my first book, That You Might Believe: Praying Advent with the Gospel of John will be out this week. I’ve a hurdle or two left, such as finishing the cover design and getting fonts to display nicely, but those should be done soon and we’ll be off to the races. I will publish at Lulu.com and will also offer it as a PDF download once I work out the functional details of doing the download after the payment processing with PayPal. I will work on getting a small batch into my own hands if anyone wishes to buy direct… pricing TBA once the Lulu details are sorted out.

I’ve been writing a fair bit on themes around a missional order since Seabeck. Anyone new to this blog might think I write on little else, but this is simply a current theme… we’ll be onto other matters soon enough, though this one is quite unlikely to be left behind entirely. I
talked a little bit about the daily office and its relation to liturgy already, but the whole subject of the daily office is one that I’ve been encouraged to write about a little more.

For those who are less familiar with the whole subject, there’s a fairly long-ish Wikipedia entry for Canonical Hours, and quoting from its introduction: