Day 20: Praying for the ministry of music and song (1893)

Join with Salvationists of the Wales Division for day 20 of 150 days of prayer.

• ‘Some people hope that their chariots will keep them safe. Other people trust their horses to save them. But we will trust in the name of the Lord our God’ (Psalm 20:7, EasyEnglish Bible). 

1893

1893 was the 300th anniversary of the birth of George Herbert in Montgomeryshire, Wales. An Anglican priest, he was ‘enormously popular, deeply and broadly influential, and arguably the most skilful and important British devotional lyricist of his or any other time’ (Poetry Foundation).

One of George Herbert’s hymns is published in The Song Book of The Salvation Army (2015), the second verse of which says:

Let all the world in every corner sing:
My God and King!
The Church with psalms must shout,
No door can keep them out;
But, more than all, the heart
Must bear the longest part.
Let all the world in every corner sing:
My God and King!

The Welsh language, storytelling and poetry have always been important in Wales. The Salvation Army recognised this by publishing a Welsh-language edition of the War Cry: Y Gad Lef. It included an appeal for poets to provide more hymns in Welsh. A list of tunes was provided. The back page of Y Gad Lef contained hymns in Welsh and music.

Prayer

• Pray for the ministry of music and song. 
• Think of a song through which God has been speaking to you recently. Sing it to him now.