Necessary Roughness

Hope Publishing Company was nice enough to let me post one of the hymns that I sang during worship Memorial Lutheran Church in Houston on July 30^th. All that was required was a phone call and a wait for the snail mail to deliver the website license.

I would like to thank Cantor Janet Muth of MLC for the opportunity to sing. She was very helpful in providing a rehearsal CD and some additional coaching. She accompanied on the pipe organ.

I would also like to thank Pastor Murray, Pastor Day, Vicar Janssen and then-Vicar-now-Seminarian Habermas for their service during my stay in Houston. MLC has been a terrific church home away from home.

Feedback is appreciated, either by email or comment, though if you plan on doing a Piers Morgan impersonation, please be objective and specific. I haven’t had much solo coaching. There are some things I can still hear, but I don’t want to bias your ear. I do not plan on quitting my day job.

Again, fingers on your volume controls.

“How Clear is Our Vocation, Lord”
Words: Fred Pratt Green
Words © 1982 Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 60188. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
To obtain permission to use or copy this hymn please visit www.hopepublishing.com.

How clear is our vocation, Lord,
when once we heed your call:
to live according to your word,
and daily learn, refreshed, restored,
that you are Lord of all,
and will not let us fall.

But if, forgetful, we should find
your yoke is hard to bear;
if worldly pressures fray the mind
and love itself cannot unwind
its tangled skein of care:
our inward life repair.

We mark your saints, how they became
in hindrances more sure,
whose joyful virtues put to shame
the casual way we wear your name,
and by our faults obscure
your power to cleanse and cure.

In what you give us, Lord, to do,
together or alone,
in old routines or ventures new,
may we not cease to look for you,
the cross you hung upon,
all you endeavored done.

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