• Thursday:  Council 7:00

• Friday:  The Anniversary of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession in 1530, and also the commemoration of Philip Melanchthon, who died in 1560.  Melanchthon was one of Luther’s closest friends and fellow reformer.  His name is on many of our confessional documents.

• On another note:  Our church sign has gone viral!  It is all over Facebook and we have even received a phone call about it.  People are now noticing us for sure!  :D

God’s Peace be with you all.

Habakkuk 2:14-20  ¹⁴ But the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.  ¹⁵ "Alas for you who make your neighbors drink, pouring out your wrath until they are drunk, in order to gaze on their nakedness!"  ¹⁶ You will be sated with contempt instead of glory. Drink, you yourself, and stagger! The cup in the LORD's right hand will come around to you, and shame will come upon your glory!  ¹⁷ For the violence done to Lebanon will overwhelm you; the destruction of the animals will terrify you-- because of human bloodshed and violence to the earth, to cities and all who live in them.  ¹⁸ What use is an idol once its maker has shaped it-- a cast image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in what has been made, though the product is only an idol that cannot speak!  ¹⁹ Alas for you who say to the wood, "Wake up!" to silent stone, "Rouse yourself!" Can it teach? See, it is gold and silver plated, and there is no breath in it at all.  ²⁰ But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!

For the past two months, I have been working on a fingerstyle guitar medley of hymns for next Christmas.  This medley includes Go Tell it on the Mountain, Joy to the World, and Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.  As I began to write this devotion yesterday, I popped in a guitar CD that I had and one of the songs on it was a version of Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.  Since it is one of my favorite hymns, I decided to do a little research on it.  Over the next few weeks, I will try to do this for more of our favorite hymns.  If you have a favorite hymn that you want to know more about, let me know, and I will see what I can find!  Below is some of the info I found on Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.

Many of the hymns we use in the church are taken from specific parts of the Bible, this one being no different.  This hymn is based on the last line of Habakkuk 2.  It is an ancient chant of Eucharistic devotion which we sometimes sing during communion.  “The original was composed in Greek as a Cherubic Hymn for the Offertory of the Divine Liturgy of St James in the fourth Century AD, with local Churches adopting arrangements in Syriac. In modern times, the Ralph Vaughan Williams arrangement of a translation from the Greek by Gerard Moultrie to the tune of Picardy, a French medieval folk melody, popularized the hymn among Christian congregations that worship liturgically.” (Wikipedia.org)

Today this hymn is found in our hymnbooks as hymn # 490.  We still use the Picady melody (which I am sure you are singing in your heads right now), and it has become a favorite among Lutherans to sing during communion.  For those of you that don’t have a hymnbook in front of you, feel free to read the lyrics below and listen to how they speak to you.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood.
Lord of lords in human nature,
In the body and the blood,
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the pow'rs of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six-winged seraph,
Cherubim, with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the Presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry,
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Lord Most High.

In our prayers this week: Wendi, Ann, Robert, and Patti M.

God’s Peace,