Hymn of the Week: December 20, 2024
Where Shepherds Lately Knelt
Glory to God: 120
TEXT: Jaroslav J. Varda, 1986
MUSIC: Carl F. Schalk, 1986
Where shepherds lately knelt
and kept the angel's word,
I come in half belief,
a pilgrim strangely stirred,
but there is room and welcome there for me,
but there is room and welcome there for me.
In that unlikely place
I find him as they said:
sweet newborn babe, how frail!
and in a manger bed,
a still, small voice to cry one day for me,
a still, small voice to cry one day for me.
How should I not have known
Isaiah would be there,
his prophecies fulfilled?
With pounding heart I stare:
a child, a son, the Prince of Peace for me,
a child, a son, the Prince of Peace for me.
Can I, will I forget
how love was born, and burned
its way into my heart
unasked, unforced, unearned,
to die, to live, and not alone for me,
to die, to live, and not alone for me?
(Luke 2:15-16 NIV)
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about." So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby, who was lying in the manger.
Dr. Jaroslav Vajda (1919-2008) was a pastor, author, and editor known as "the dean of hymn writers in North America." He was the author of over 225 hymn texts and translations in 60 Christian hymnals and printed collections on five continents. One of his most widely known hymns is "Go, My Children, with My Blessing." The hymn the men’s quartet will sing at the candlelight service on Christmas Eve is written by Dr. Vajda. The following is what he wrote about how the hymn came to be written.
“A request from Augsburg Publishing House for a Christmas song for their Christmas annual prompted the composition of this hymn on the adoration of the Christ Child in the manger. I wondered what fresh approach and contemporary application could be made of that central event in history. Rather than report the event again in the third person, as so many Christmas songs do, I placed myself in spirit at that poor manger bed and reviewed the implications of that visit in my life and future and in that of my fellow human beings. I have struggled, and more so as I grow older, with the incomprehensibility of that event and of my connection with it, and with each commemoration of that miracle becoming more routine, though its impact on God’s heart remains the means of my salvation. I pictured myself on the opposite side of the event from Isaiah and his prophecy (Isaiah 9:6, 7), applying the same promise to myself as a late-arriving pilgrim."
From Now the Joyful Celebration by Jaroslav J. Vajda
