Notes on the Notes – June 23, 2013

This week’s Theme: Faith

Scripture: Galatians 3:23-29

This week’s Music –

“As Comes the Breath of Spring”  (VU #373) –

As comes the breath of spring with light and mirth and song, so does your Spirit bring new days brave, free, and strong.  You come with thrill of life to chase hence winter’s breath, to hush to peace the strife of sin that ends in death…

The text for this hymn was written in 1929 by David Lakie Ritchie, Dean of United Theological College in Montreal, for The Hymnary (1930).  The tune, by Charles Dale, was published in England in the Methodist Hymn Book (1904).

“I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” (VU #626) –

“I heard the voice of Jesus say,   ‘Come unto me and rest; lay down,  O weary one, lay down your head upon my breast.’   I came to Jesus as I was, weary and worn and sad; I found in him a resting place, and he has made me glad.”

Horatius Bonar wrote this hymn for his congregation at Kelso in the border district of Scotland, and gave it the title “The Voice from Galilee.”    The tune is a traditional fold melody from England and Ireland.  It was arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams for the English Hymnal (1906).  The tune is named KINGSFOLD after the village in Surrey where Vaughan Williams collected the folk song.

Choir boy, Anthony Way (13 yrs old) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RGgS4kyGWI

Folk band “Trinity” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czJdw7epq3U

Flute and harp instrumental http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34hdxri8qbk

Singer Joanna Hogg – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH4OVm8nzXk

Pipe Organ – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eed_d6cfOGI

“Bless Now, O God, the Journey” (VU #633) –

“Bless now, O God, the journey that all your people make, the path through noise and silence, the way of give and take.  The trail is found in desert and winds the mountain round, then leads beside still waters, the road where faith is found.”

This hymn is from Sylvia Dunstun’s first collection In Search of Hope and Grace (1991).    Basil Harwood was an English organist who composed the tune THORNBURY for a different set of words –  Edward Plumptre’s text for the hymn “Your Hand, O God, Has Guided” (VU #274) in 1898.