Sunday Singing: A Christian Home

“A Christian Home” sung by the congregation of Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California

Here’s a relatively new hymn set to an older and familiar tune. It’s a song of trusting the Lord with all our cares, fears, and responsibilities. I think of it as a Thanksgiving-themed song, but giving thanks is only implied.

Lord, “be thou the center of our least endeavour.
Be thou our guest, our hearts and homes to share.”

Barbara B Hart wrote the words to “A Christian Home,” or “O Give Us Homes Built Firm Upon the Savior,” in 1965. I can find nothing biographical on Hart except her year of birth. Perhaps her publisher, Singpiration Music or The Benson Company, will tell us about her one day.

The tune is “Finlandia” by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), which is also the melody for the hymn “Be Still, My Soul.” Sibelius wrote his tone poem in 1899 for the Finnish Press Pension Celebration, “a thinly veiled rally in support of freedom of the Finnish press,” according to Britannica.

The words are under copyright, so I won’t reproduce them here, but they are reproduced in the video along with additional verse, the third one, that isn’t in the Trinity hymnal I use for reference.

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