Lord, What a Cloud of Witnesses

Representative Text

Lord, what a cloud of witnesses
Surrounds us as we work and pray!
Their faithful, loving service is
An inspiration every day.

We live in towns that others made;
We harvest what we did not sow—
And others sweated, labored, prayed
To build Christ’s church in which we grow.

Your Spirit gives us memory;
Now give your church clear vision, too.
Reformed, reforming, may we be
A church that seeks to follow you.


Source: Songs of Grace: new hymns for God and neighbor #55a

Author: Carolyn Winfrey Gillette

Carolyn Winfrey Gillette has been a pastor in rural, small town, suburban, and city churches; she has also served as a hospice chaplain, a hospital chaplain, and a school bus aide helping children with special needs. She and her husband Bruce are pastors of the First Presbyterian Union Church in Owego, NY. Carolyn is a gifted hymn writer who has written over 400 hymns. These hymns have been sung by congregations throughout the United States and around the world — from the Washington National Cathedral to St. Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland to St. George's Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa to small town churches and small household congregations; they have also been sung at national church and international ecumenical meetin… Go to person page >

Text Information

First Line: Lord, what a cloud of witnesses
Title: Lord, What a Cloud of Witnesses
Original Language: English
Author: Carolyn Winfrey Gillette (2000)
Meter: 8.8.8.8
Language: English
Publication Date: 2000
Copyright: Copyright © 2000 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved

Tune

TALLIS' CANON

TALLIS CANON is one of nine tunes Thomas Tallis (PHH 62) contributed to Matthew Parker's Psalter (around 1561). There it was used as a setting for Psalm 67. In the original tune the melody began in the tenor, followed by the soprano, and featured repeated phrases. Thomas Ravenscroft (PHH 59) publish…

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TRURO (Williams)

TRURO is an anonymous tune, first published in Thomas Williams's Psalmodia Evangelica, (second vol., 1789) as a setting for Isaac Watts' "Now to the Lord a noble song." Virtually nothing is known about this eighteenth-century British editor of the two-volume Psalmodia Evangelica, a collection of thr…

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Instances

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Text

Songs of Grace #55a

Text

Songs of Grace #55b

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