dear christians one and all rejoice shortened version

Dear christians one and all rejoice shortened version free#

The performance is by the early music group Weser-Renaissance Bremen, and Bremen isn’t that far from Schleswig-Holstein. That’s about as far north from Wittenberg as you can get and still be in Germany, and a detail about the YouTube videos got me thinking. (I’ve blogged about the family connection before, HERE and HERE, toward the bottom of the post.) I’ve only been able to trace our forebears back to a Johan Caspar Walther, born in 1764, who emigrated from Schleswig-Holstein to Norway. I’m not sure of the exactly relationship, but by my calculation he would be roughly my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle. But I have another reason.Īccording to a story handed down in my family, we are descended from Johann Walther. Luther’s foreword in itself makes the Geistliches Gesangbüchlein worthy of notice. “These songs have been set in four parts,” said Luther himself in a foreword, “for no other reason than because I wished to provide our young people (who both will and ought to be instructed in music and other sciences) with something by which they might rid themselves of amorous and carnal songs, and so apply themselves to what is good with pleasure, as becometh the young.” Walther, who was the kantor or choir director for Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, was a friend of Luther’s and edited the Geistliches Gesangbüchlein. But the Geistliches Gesangbüchlein was the first collection of Lutheran chorales arranged for choir. Equally important, I think, is Luther’s Achtliederbuch (book of eight songs), which came out in Nürnberg in 1523. “The collection,” says Wikipedia (with slight exaggeration) of the Geistliches Gesangbüchlein, to give it its modern German spelling, “has been called the root of all Protestant song music.” Neuendorf, pastor of Holy Cross Evangelical Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa.

Dear christians one and all rejoice shortened version free#

First published in 1524, it contains 32 songs, including 24 by Luther, and it went through several editions in the next 20 years.Īlso available online: A brief description and song directory of the 1524 edition, with links to MIDI files and YouTube videos (where available) in the The Free Lutheran Chorale-Book compiled by Christopher J. It’s an audio file of songs from Johann Walther’s Eyn Geystliche gesangk Buchleyn (little spiritual song book), best known as Walther’s - and Martin Luther’s - first Wittenberg chorale book or hymnal with harmony settings for choir. Life will from death the vict’ry win My innocence shall bear your sin, and you are blest forever.Today I stumbled across a YouTube post I expect to spend a lot of time with, even though it features music that’s not exactly on the charts today - and it’s a pretty wonky thing to curl up with for light summer reading. That’s where Jesus points us. His is the voice speaking in this stanza - “Though he will shed My precious blood, Me of My life bereaving, all this I suffer for your good Be steadfast and believing. No, our worth is to be found where it has always been found (even before the fall into sin) - in God’s love for us. We are His creation, made in His image. Having fallen He redeemed us not with gold or silver but with the holy precious blood of Christ. except when we give them the place in our hearts that belongs to God. Plus, these things are all temporary at best. Base your worth on these things and your worth will also be fleeting - here today and gone tomorrow. What about things that the world says give us worth? Our jobs? Our income? Our popularity? Our health? The good opinions of others? There is nothing wrong those things per say.

Where do you or I find worth? Is it in what good Christians we think we are? But what do we do with this truth - that all of us sin and fall short of the glory of God? Or what of Paul’s words, “nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh?” Those words apply to all of us. Life will from death the vict’ry win My innocence shall bear your sin, And you are blest forever.” “Though he will shed My precious blood, Me of My life bereaving, All this I suffer for your good Be steadfast and believing. “Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice!” stanza 8