Introduction

Words: Ger­ald H. Ken­ne­dy, cir­ca 1939.

Music: Uns­er Herr­scher Jo­ach­im Ne­an­der, 1680 (🔊 pdf nwc).

If you know where to get a good pho­to of Ken­ne­dy (head & shoul­ders, at least 200×300 pix­els),

At my first church af­ter se­mi­na­ry, which was the Cal­va­ry Me­tho­dist Church in San Jose, Ca­li­for­nia, I be­came ac­quaint­ed with a man who was head of one of the mu­sic de­part­ments in one of the jun­ior high schools. He said to me one day that he would like to write a hymn tune if I would write the words…

I was a young preach­er just start­ing out and tried to ex­press my feel­ing of the main Chris­tian theme of that par­ti­cu­lar pe­ri­od. The young peo­ple here and there be­gan to get hold of it and it became a fair­ly po­pu­lar hymn in Ca­li­for­nia. Then it spread here and there and I was quite thrilled when they sang it one night in Aus­tral­ia at a youth ral­ly where I spoke a cou­ple of years ago.

Gerald H. Ken­ne­dy, 1966