REFLECTIONS ON FAITH & LIFE FOR THE YEARS OF WINTER
Our church doesn’t use hymnals. Everything is printed in the bulletin. It’s handy, but does provide opportunity for typos, such as in the bulletin for yesterday, 11-27, in the hymn, “Blest be the God of Israel.”
“So have the prophets long declared that with a mighty arm
God would turn back our enemies and all who wish us farm.”
Thinking further about it, though, perhaps that is not a typo, but something Michael Parry intended. After all, he was born only five years after I, so if he grew up on a farm, he might have lived the same way I did on the farm—using an outhouse, carrying water in from a well [and from the nearest neighbors, a quarter mile away, when the well went dry], hoeing weeds in the garden, plowing with a horse, making hay with a pitch fork, picking corn by hand, milking cows the same way… did I mention hoeing weeds?
So, I pray: Oh, God, please turn back my enemies, but don’t stop there. Turn back all who wish me farm.
John Robert McFarland
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