Introit: When We Are Living
Gertrude Suppe supplies the background of this hymn: “In
February 1980, after a church meeting in La Trinidad United Methodist Church in
Los Angeles, CA, I saw a woman standing off to one side by herself. I got
acquainted with her and found that she was visiting from Mexico. I asked if she
remembered any of the songs they used in her church in Mexico. She did, and her
sister, Ana Maria Domingues, sang a number of simple songs… “Pues si vivimos”
was one of them.” The first stanza is based on Romans 14:7-8: “We do not live
to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord,
and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die,
we are the Lord’s.”
Hymn: To God Be the Glory
Fanny Crosby wrote this hymn for children and titled it,
“Praise for Redemption.” It was published in an 1875 hymnal and long forgotten
until 1954. In that year, someone suggested the hymn to Cliff Barrows to be
used during the Billy Graham Greater London Crusade. It soon became a favorite
of the crusade and was used at the 1954 Nashville Crusade. This particular hymn
is different from other Crosby works in that it takes a more objective, distant
point of view rather than a subjective, personal nature.
Hymn: My Faith Looks Up to Thee
Ray Palmer was teaching at a girls school in New York City when
he wrote this hymn. He states, “These stanzas were born out of my own soul with
very little effort… ‘Oh, bear me safe above, A ransomed soul!’… the thought
that the whole work of redemption and salvation was involved in those words…
brought me to a degree of emotion that brought abundant tears.”
Hymn: Fight the Good Fight
This hymn, based on 1 Timothy 6:12, is by John Monsell and
was published in 1863. The passage reads, “Fight the good fight of the faith;
take hold of the eternal life, who which you were called and for which you made
the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”
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