Joy to the world, the Lord is come!Let earth receive her King;Let every heart prepare him room,and heaven and nature sing.And Heaven and nature sing,And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing. Joy to the world, the Saviour reigns!Let all their songs employ;while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plainsrepeat the sounding joy.Repeat the sounding joy,Repeat, […]
URC Daily Devotion 22nd December
Comfort, comfort now my people;speak of peace – so says your God.Comfort those who sit in darkness,burdened by a heavy load.To Jerusalem proclaim:God shall take away your shame.Now get ready to recover;guilt and suffering are over. Hear the herald’s proclamationIn the desert far and near,calling all to true repentance,telling that the Lord is near.Oh that […]
URC Daily Devotion 21st December
Lo! He comes, with clouds descending,once for our salvation slain;thousand thousand saints attendingswell the triumph of His train.Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!God appears on earth to reign. 2 Ev’ry eye shall now behold Him,robed in dreadful majesty;those who set at naught and sold Him,pierced, and nailed Him to the tree,deeply wailing, deeply wailing,shall the true Messiah see. […]
URC Daily Devotion 20th December
My Soul is Filled with Joy / Holy is Your Name (Magnificat – Wild Mountain Thyme) This is a setting of the Magnificat / Canticle of Mary (from Luke 1) to the Scottish folk-tune “Wild Mountain Thyme” (also known as “Will ye Go Lassie, Go”). The author is unknown: It was published in 1978 […]
URC Daily Devotion 19th December
This is a free rendering of a Basque carol, ‘Birjina gaztettobat zegoen’, which Baring-Gould may have come across in his travels. It was published in one of a series of pamphlets entitled The University Carol Book in 1922. The Angel Gabriel from heaven came,his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame;‘All hail’, said he, ‘thou lowly maiden […]
URC Daily Devotion 18th September
This is a translation of a Latin hymn, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, itself a metrical paraphrase of the O Antiphons – a series of plainchant antiphons attached to the Magnificat at Vespers over the final days before Christmas. O come, O come, Immanuel,and ransom captive Israel,that mourns in lonely exile hereuntil the Son of God appear. Rejoice, rejoice!Immanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. O come, thou Wisdom […]
URC Daily Devotions 17th December
To you I call, O LORD my Rock;Do not be deaf to my loud cry.I’ll be like those gone down to death,If you are silent in reply. Receive my plea for mercy, LORD,As now I call to you for grace,As I lift up my hands in prayerAnd look to your Most Holy Place. O drag […]
URC Daily Devotion 16th December
For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished. Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we […]
URC Daily Devotion 15th December
In these times,when we feel like exiles in a foreign land… In these times,as we hanker after an age that felt so much clearer than the confused and uncertain now… In these times,the great and glorious past (the days of packed churches, world peace, community as family, children safely playing in the streets…)calls to us […]
URC Daily Devotion 14th December
In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest: Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the […]