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Hoosier Musings on the Road to Emmaus

Friday, April 15, 2005

Veni sancte spiritus

Come, thou fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace!
Streams of mercy never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! Oh, fix me on it,
mount of God’s unchanging love.

Here I find my greatest treasure;
hither, by thy help, I’ve come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.

Oh, to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee;
prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart, oh, take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

*sniffle* Aww... My J-Mom is all growed up...

April 15, 2005 7:24 AM  

Blogger Keith Brenton said...

I've never encountered some of these verses before - not all of them reach our hymnals. Thanks for sharing them!

April 15, 2005 10:32 AM  

Blogger Benedict Seraphim said...

sister Jane:

You were prayed for this morning, with your ministry in mind.

The Lord bless and keep you and yours.

April 15, 2005 10:58 AM  

Blogger Unknown said...

Beautiful. These verses in a Sacred Harp setting, with "I will arise and go to Jesus" as the refrain, were one of the anthems at my ordination.
Grace and peace on this wonderful day.

April 15, 2005 11:34 AM  

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Tripp's friend Megan says...

Best wishes and congratulations to you, Jane!

April 15, 2005 12:47 PM  

Blogger Reverend Ref + said...

I can actually sing that one! Of course, I couldn't get through it at my ordination either.

And, as usual, I have no words. I'll be at the next one . . . promise.

April 15, 2005 8:13 PM  

Blogger Emily said...

Congratulations--may the Spirit fill you with the grace needed for where God is calling you!

April 15, 2005 9:50 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Congratulations! Prayers arising for you today. - Karen

April 16, 2005 8:06 AM  

Blogger Jason said...

Hearty congratulations to you, Jane, as you enter this new stage of life and ministry (which will continue to unfurl when you are ordained presbyter)! May God bless you and those among whom you work!
Cheers,
JF

April 16, 2005 7:26 PM  

Blogger Paul said...

Hi Jane - As a former divinity school student myself, I always had trouble with the idea of gratitude for God's blessings re. the personal events of one's life.

Gratitude for the air, the light - I've felt that. But I guess the problem of gratitude for personal good forture as blessing first arose for me through, of all things, Reader's Digest!

I think I just read one too many "Disasters in Real Life" articles where the sole survivor "thanks God" that he or she didn't die the same horrible death as all those other people in, say, the fiery plane crash. It started to sound - well, not really so humble or pious. Especially when they'd add, "God must have a special purpose for me" - but apparently not for those other clods who were ground into dust, although they never mention that...

I did my Masters thesis on the book of Job. Did you know that scholars have figured out that the "happy ending" where Job gets a new wife, his health problems disappear etc, was tacked on centuries later by a different author? As written,it ends with a good man horribly afflicted and God speaking to him from out of the whirlwind: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?"

The idea is that life, with its wildly mixed picture of pleasure and pain, happiness and suffering, is simply beyond our ability to comprehend.

And so when people speak in terms of God having particularly "blessed" them when something good happens - oftentimes, much as though they felt they deserved it - I don't feel that its true to life or to any realisic idea of God.

The third thing, is that I happen to be a good man who, for 12 years, has been living Job's life. At this point I'm semi-bedridden and the continuous physical pain from my undiagnosable "mystery disease" is really pretty terrible as of the last year and a half. (For more, see www.hmoappeals.com. I'll add, in case anyone looks at the site, that a few weeks ago, after about 8 months of looking, we did finally find a doctor who would make a house call. Sure could have used him 8 months earlier though...)

Maybe the moral is: never do a Masters thesis on Job. God may overestimate your level of interest...

Sorry for such a long message. Maybe I'll turn it into a post for my blog...

April 18, 2005 8:25 AM  

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