Prayers from me

A friend from the church of my eldest son, saw the website and told him to ask me to play "God Only Knows." I don't think I've ever played this, but I found that I had a copy of the music. I thought I'd give it a try, so this is for him. This is a song from The Beach Boys, and the lyrics at the end go on and on - "God only knows what I'd be with-out you," again and again. I hope you enjoy it.

My daughter Cheri told me that this was her husband, Jack's, favorite song. I'm so thankful for all the ways that Jack is helping my daughter. In one of the hymnals where I found this hymn, under the title it says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock..." Rev. 3:20. It was a decent arrangement, but I wanted to make an arrangement especially for him.

A prelude is a performance, action or event, preceding and preparing for the principal or a more important matter. I played the Raindrop Prelude when I was a kid and in Illinois, I thought that raindrops were sort of a nuisance, but now that I'm older and live here, I realize much better what a great blessing raindrops are. They feed all kinds of blessed flowers and plants, and even help provide water for us to drink. This piece was requested as a favorite of Dawn. She is the lovely wife of Mark who has been tuning my piano lately. Dawn does the scheduling and Mark drives all over to tune pianos. One interesting thing about these 24 preludes that Chopin wrote is that he dedicates them to Joseph Christoph Kessler, a German pianist and composer, who 10 years earlier, had dedicated his own set of 24 Preludes, Op. 31, to Chopin. Kessler's Prelude in E Minor is also a favorite that many people enjoy.

I met Judy White when I came back to Illinois after college. She was a member of the Waukegan Methodist Church, where my parents were going. She not only played the trumpet, and was the only other female in the Waukegan Municipal Band, but she also babysat for my oldest kid, when I went to school for my Master's degree. This is a piece she wrote, and it's a way to thank her for the blessing that she has been to me.

There were two songs I was going to play for my cousin Rita's friend, who's husband had a stroke. One was "Like A River Glorious", which I played a while back and this was the other one. For this piece I only had an organ and piano duet arrangement, so I had to order the music. When I got it, my printer was also not working. Now that I finally got it and figured out how to print it, I've recorded it for her. This is a hymn that has been used around the globe and across denominational lines. It was also incorporated in two of the most televised services of the last two decades, the funeral of Princess Diana of Wales (1977) and the royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton (2011). The author of this hymn never intended to be a minister, and instead wished to be a doctor. Eventually after hearing the preaching of Howell Harris, he made the decision to pursue ordination in the Established Church. He became a well known writer of Welsh Methodism, with beautiful imagery, and this hymn contains traces of the hardships he experienced as a traveling minister. I hope you enjoy it.

The most familiar tune for this hymn was written by Charles Converse, but there is a bit of a mystery as to the origin of this hymn. It involves a book of poems by Joseph Scriven, which was missing eight lines of text. The present location of this book is unknown. Scriven spent the last years of his life in the home of James Sackville, near Rice Lake and Port Hope, Ontario. Sackville claims that this hymn was never published by Scriven in any book or paper. He claims that Scriven only sent a copy to his mother and Sackville's mother. The current location of the Sackville manuscript is also unknown. Some suggest it was printed in Dublin, while Converse credits the text to the "Genevan Presbyterian Church (of Brooklyn) Collection". Others believe Converse learned of Scriven's hymn from a salesperson visiting the Burdette Organ Company in Erie, Pennsylvania. The story is that Scriven was so touched by the words that he rushed to find an organ to craft a melody. H. L. Hastings published this hymn for the first time in 1865, and included a fourth stanza. Hastings credited it to Scriven, which made it seem that the additional stanza was not new. Early printings of this hymn were attributed to Horatius Bonar as well. An alternate tune was composed by Frederick G. Carter, and The editors of the Companion to Church Hymnal (2000) called Carter's tune "a fresh, effective, and eminently congregational tune that is well suited to the text," whereas with the tune by Converse, they said, "not much can be done to relieve the dull boredom of this tune, which is all too typical of gospel tunes of the period". This is why I like the Fred Bock arrangement of this hymn so much. He did a wonderful job arranging this tune, and making it a beautiful piece of piano music.

This hymn was written in 1758, and it was the first hymn in a collection of hymns for the user of the Church of Christ. Nettleton is the name of the tune composed for this hymn, by John Wyeth. Fred Bock was an organist in California who played and arranged both piano and organ music. In one of his books he tells that he enjoyed playing the piano more than the organ. That's where I am too. Someone asked me about that, saying that organists have to use their feet a lot, like their whole body. But I said, "Yes, but when you press an organ key, either hard or soft, it comes out the same, depending on the pipes you chose, but on the piano you can play each key 20 different ways, and I enjoy working at that. Plus you still use your feet.

This is Luther’s most famous hymn. I chose it because I was so blessed to get to go to a Billy Graham celebration in Chicago years ago, and I'm so thankful that his son, Franklin Graham, is making a trip down Route 66 starting on Sunday, to help more people trust Jesus. I don't have money to help, but hopefully that song, arranged by the man who played the piano at Billy Graham festivals will encourage more people. From the records of 19th-century hymnologists we know that there were a few hymnals that contained “A Mighty Fortress” before 1533, but these hymnals were destroyed in the bombing of Dresden during World War II. Most scholars think Luther wrote the hymn between 1521 and 1529, with the majority of scholars settling on 1527–28. What many of us might not realize is that the Festival of the Reformation was not celebrated during Luther’s lifetime. It is unknown what prompted Luther to write the hymn. Scholars have suggested a number of events during these dark years in his life when it was written. There was the death of a man who followed Luther's teachings, a plague that broke out in Wittenberg, Luther's daughter had also died. He was struggling mentally and spiritually. There were also issues within the Roman church, and Luther felt that his family, reputation, and work for the Reformation, was all at stake. Not only is this hymn known as the "Battle Hymn of the Reformation", but also as a battle cry against the pope and Rome. Yet, when Luther likely wrote the hymn, his greatest challenge arose from other groups that had broken away from Rome. There were people who claimed to follow the Bible who wanted to revolt against the government, something Luther did not approve of. Others questioned whether pastors were necessary. They believed anyone could proclaim the Word of God. Some doubted whether infants should be baptized. The greatest and most divisive controversy among the reformers also took place during these years. It is known as the Sacramentarian Controversy, or the fight over the Lord’s Supper. Luther saw this controversy as directly related to the proclamation of the Gospel. He believed that the literal words of Jesus needed to be confessed and defended.

This is a 19th-century English hymn. The words were written by Sabine Baring-Gould in 1865, and the music was composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1871. Sullivan named the tune "St. Gertrude," after the wife of his friend Ernest Clay Ker Seymer, at whose country home he composed the tune. The Salvation Army adopted the hymn as its favored processional. The piece became Sullivan's most popular hymn. The lyric was written as a processional hymn for children walking from Horbury Bridge to Horbury St Peter's Church near Wakefield, Yorkshire, at Whitsuntide in 1865. It was originally entitled, "Hymn for Procession with Cross and Banners." According to the Centre for Church Music, Baring-Gould reportedly wrote "Onward, Christian Soldiers" in about 15 minutes, later apologizing, "It was written in great haste, and I am afraid that some of the lines are faulty." He later allowed hymn-book compilers to alter the lyrics.

Recently I received a text from my cousin, Rita, who asked if I would play "Like a River Glorious" for her friend, Janelle. Janelle's husband had a major stroke. Many prayers for Janelle and her husband.

When Frances Havergal was vacationing in the south of Wales, 1876, she caught a severe cold, accompanied by inflammation of the lungs. Hearing how ill she was, and that she might die, she replied, "If I am really going, it is too good to be true". Her friends were amazed at how peacefully she received this information. She did survive that illness, and later that year she wrote the hymn "Like a River Glorious". It echoes Isaiah in which God promises peace like a river. Peace is yours already, purchased for you, made for you, sealed for you, pledged to you.