Rejoice in our Lord always

Rejoice in our Lord always; again I say, rejoice!

In how you live with others, make gentleness your choice.

 

Let worry not consume you, nor be weighed down with care,

But bring your needs before God with thanksgiving and prayer.

 

Then God's own peace, surpassing all things that we can know,

Will guard your hears and minds sure as you with Jesus go.

 

Keep on with these things you have learned, seen, received, and heard,

And God's peace will go with you to keep you in God's Word.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, October 2023, after Philippians 4:5-7, 9.

MUSIC: Tune CHRISTUS, DER IST MEIN LEBEN, Melchior Vulpius, 1609.

 

 

 

Somehow this text, after the heart of the RCL epistle reading for next Sunday (10/15/23), got up in my face to be written down even though I have no plans to preach on it for next week. But it's an epistle, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The reading itself is longer, but these central verses and the final verse fit themselves together to this calm-but-resolute tune.

 

Do not pray for peace

Do not pray for peace 

Until you yearn for justice

Until that yearning is so strong 

You cannot be at rest

 

Do not pray for peace

Or reconciliation

Until you're filled with great desire 

To make right what is wrong

 

Do not pray for peace

Until you loathe oppression 

With so much holy raging fire 

You cannot let it stand

 

Do not pray for peace

If you will not take action

If you cannot show God's own love

Unto "the least of these"

 

Do not pray for peace

If all you want is safety

If all that matters in the end

Is that you are not harmed

 

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, March 2022

I don't know if this is a hymn or not. It doesn't fit to any tune I know, and I'm not a tune composer enough to make one for this text. All I know to do is to throw it out there and see if any hymn tune composers take an interest in making a tune for it.