"Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the living of these days."

Hymn: “God of Grace and God of Glory” – Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969)
Typical Tune: CWM RHONDDA

On this first day of 2014, I will interrupt the carols of Christmas and Epiphany to reflect on my favorite beginning-a-new-year hymn. While it is a fairly new hymn by comparison, it is one which most of us know and can sing a phrase here and there from it.

It is a hymn for the church to sing about herself with prayerlines like:
•    On thy people pour thy power.
•    Crown thine ancient church’s story, bring her bud to glorious flower.
•    Free our hearts to work and praise.
•    Bend our pride to thy control.

I’ll deal with other phrases from this hymn later in my trek toward 365 of these thoughts, but for today, let’s deal with the closing phrase – almost a refrain – of the second stanza. In case you don’t have that one memorized (!), here it is:
    Lo! the hosts of evil ‘round us scorn our Christ, assail his ways.
    Fears and doubts too long have bound us; free our hearts to work and praise.
    Grant us wisdom, grand us courage for the living of these days,
        for the living of these days.

This is how we find ourselves: Hosts of the Evil One gang up on us, make fun of our Lord Christ and try to get in the way of all our progress on his behalf. We are tied up with fear and doubt.

This is our prayer: Please God, come and cut us loose – not just so we can run about as we please, but so we can do your work and praise your name. Pour out your wisdom and courage upon us -- as a church, as individuals – because we have days ahead for which we are accountable, days in which we want to live fully as your people.

For his day, Fosdick was considered a liberal, caught in the middle of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920’s and 30’s. An outspoken opponent of racism and injustice, he was the first pastor of the great Riverside Church in New York. If you read the full hymn, you will see some of his causes included.

Hardly anyone today would consider him a liberal… more of a centrist if anything. But his great mind and deep commitment to the future of the church, especially in America, led him to write this wonderful hymn in 1930 for our consideration on this first day of January. May we sing this refrain as we begin every day: “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the living of these days.”

A Congregational Singing of This Hymn (First Presbyterian in Houston)

Paul Manz Setting on the Organ (Concordia College)