Prescott Church - 4th of July activities

[Tom Walsh]

Our movie tonight, with the 4th of July holiday coming up, is the Kevin Bacon film Taking Chance.  It's a quietly moving HBO film (just 1 hr, 17 min) of a true story, about a Marine colonel who accompanies the coffin of a fallen soldier from the Iraq War back to his hometown in Wyoming.  We'll see it on the Big Screen in Fellowship Hall.

 

We'll start serving food at 5:45 p.m. and try to begin the movie by 6:20.  We'll have the usual summer movie fare -- fruit, salad, chicken tenders, pizza, candy, soft drinks, etc.

 

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Here's the story behind our featured hymn for worship this Sunday, 4th of July weekend:

 

 

No. 705  Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory

(The Battle Hymn of the Republic)

 

Julia Ward Howe Howe was an outspoken Christian liberal of her time.  A member of Boston’s Radical Club, she vehemently opposed slavery and supported women’s right to vote.  After the war she organized women to work for international peace.  For her life’s work she received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Smith College.

Howe wrote these lyrics during the dark days of the U.S. Civil War, when hundreds of thousands on both sides were giving their lives.  More Americans died in that conflict than in both world wars combined.

She sent the words to the Atlantic Monthly magazine for an honorarium of five dollars!  But money wasn’t her concern.  She wanted to provide wholesome lyrics for the catchy camp meeting tune “John Brown’s Body Lies A-Moldering in the Grave.”  She accomplished much more.  When President Abraham Lincoln first heard the hymn, he was moved to tears and asked to have it sung again.  Soon the entire nation was singing it.

The text is filled with Biblical allusions.  The expression “grapes of wrath” (later used by John Steinbeck as the title for his great novel), refers to Rev. 14:19; the sounding trumpet probably refers to Rev. 8. 

While we usually sing this hymn around patriotic holidays, we as people of faith should be careful not to identify political causes or even national patriotism with God’s truth.  We can be loyal to our country, but that loyalty pales in comparison to our loyalty to God, to whom we owe our ultimate allegiance. 

For us, the message of this hymn is that God’s truth is eternal.  Though circumstances may appear overwhelmingly difficult, God’s purposes will ultimately prevail.  Nations may rise and fall, but God’s love and truth, which know no national boundaries, will march on forever.

 

 

www.fordharrison.com Thomas J. Walsh, Jr. 795 Ridge Lake Boulevard, Suite 300 Memphis, Tennessee  38120 Phone: 901-291-1552 Fax: 901-291-1501 twa...@fordharrison.com