April 28, 2024

First let me thank all those who offered prayers for my healing of what the spine specialist and I presume is an episode coming from L5/S1; I am due for an MRI 5/3 to be certain and to know if anything can be done to prevent future problems.  Five days ago there was no way I could have driven the distance to Calvary, and, though I am not entirely out of pain, I can now drive and play the organ comfortably.  God's healing continues.   

The prelude Sunday is the setting of the beautiful Gaelic hymn melody "Morning Has Broken", which I intended to play 2 weeks ago.  As noted then, it is by Franklin D. Ashdown (1942-2023), the Texas born prolific church music composer -- and physician-- whose music I use often.

Processing, we will sing the great 19th century hymn "Love divine, all loves excelling", 657, words by Charles Wesley.  The Gospel hymn, "Like the murmur of the dove's song" (513), seems to hint at upcoming Pentecost, but it does relate to the day's Gospel reading from John.  

Our anthem, "Break Forth in Joy", is by Dr. Richard Harrison Smith (b.1937), an American who as a composer primarily arranged African American spirituals, though this anthem is an exception.  He had a most successful career conducting the Jamestown Concert Choir as well as teaching.  

Communion hymns are the Ralph Vaughan Williams/ George Herbert "Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life" (487), which, as another arrangement, the choir has often sung as an anthem, and 581, with the wonderful text, "Where charity and love prevail there God is ever found".

Closing, we will sing hymn 296, another favorite, "We know that Christ is raised and dies no more", the tune by the famous English composer, Charles Villiers Stanford, who wrote many popular anthems, most requiring a larger choir than we have.  

The postlude will be, again what I intended to play 2 weeks ago, a David Lasky (contemporary American) setting of hymn 518, "Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation", the tune known as "Westminster Abbey".