Wednesday, March 25, 2015

O Wonder Great!

March 25th. nine months before the celebration of Christmas (the incarnation of our Lord), brings us on the Church Year calendar to the Annunciation of Our Lord.  What a mystery and what a miracle we recall this day!  In that holy moment, Gabriel (meaning, God is my strength) brings Mary the news that she will be a son who will also be God's Son! Written in 2012, this text is set to the 1999 tune by Joseph Herl, ICH LIEGE, HERR, IN DEINER HUT.

1
O wonder great! Now contemplate
How Mary's womb is favored:
Surrounds God's Son, the Holy One,
Our comfort, life and Savior!

2
O joyous plan--here God is man,
This miracle conceiving!
We know not how, but humbly bow,
By faith this truth receiving.

3
Lord, I am Thine and Thou are mine
In this Thine incarnation:
My flesh and blood, my highest good,
My heaven-sent salvation.

4
Praise God anew! This Father who
To me His Son is giving;
For all my needs His mercy pleads--
In Him forever living!


2 comments:

middling said...

Beautiful -- I really like the internal rhyme in the first verse of each stanza. Would you happen to have a link to the tune you mention? A quick search on youtube for "Ich liege Herr in deiner Hut" yields several different tunes, all of which are quite pretty, but none of which seem to be connected with a Joseph Herl.

amelithpastor said...

Thanks. The tune ICH LIEGE HERR IN DEINER HUT" is found in Lutheran Service Book, the hymnal of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, available through Concordia Publishing House in hard copy and recently now as an e-book. Joe wrote the tune for Herman Stuempfle's text, "I Lie, O Lord, within Your Care," a translation of a text by Jochen Klepper, the 20th-century German hymn writer. The tune is LSB 885, in the evening section of hymns.