Music & HymnsStrengthen For Service, Lord

"The Lord had made them joyful…to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God." Ezra 6:22

Words: The words were inspired by a prayer said by a deacon during the Lord's Supper in the Liturgy of Malabar, a 5th Century Nestorian rite of the Mar Thomas Christians on the southern coast of India; translated from Syriac to English by C. W. Humphreys and Percy Dearmer in The English Hymnal (London: Oxford University Press, 1906).

Music: "Ach Gott und Herr"; melody by C. Peter, circa 1655, adapted and harmonized by Johann Sebastian Bach

Strengthen for service, Lord, the hands
That holy things have taken;
Let ears that now have heard thy songs
To clamor never waken.

Lord, may the tongues which 'Holy' sang
Keep free from all deceiving;
The eyes which saw Thy love be bright
Thy blessèd hope perceiving.

The feet that tread Thy holy courts
From light do Thou not banish;
The bodies by Thy body fed
With Thy new life replenish.

Hymns supplied through the gracious generosity of the Cyber Hymnal Website