Help Us Accept Each Other

Full Text

1 Help us accept each other As Christ accepted us;
Teach us as sister, brother, Each person to embrace.
Be present, Lord, among us And bring us to believe
We are ourselves accepted And meant to love and live.

2 Teach us, O Lord, Your lessons, As in our daily life
We struggle to be human And search for hope and faith.
Teach us to care for people, For all, not just for some,
To love them as we find them Or as they may become.

3 Let Your acceptance change us, So that we may be moved
In living situations To do the truth in love;
To practice Your acceptance Until we know by heart
The table of forgiveness And laughter's healing art.

4 Lord, for today's encounters With all who are in need,
Who hunger for acceptance, For righteousness and bread,
We need new eyes for seeing, New hands for holding on:
Renew us with Your Spirit; Lord, free us, make us one!

Author: Fred Kaan

Fred Kaan was known and honoured throughout the English speaking world as a hymn writer. He was in the tradition of reformed ministers such as Philip Doddridge who wrote hymns to follow and sum up the sermons they preached. Having started to write hymns early in his ministry, his output grew steadily during his career. The post-war years witnessed an explosion of hymn writing that can loosely be categorised into two groups. There were those writers who worked in a traditional style, seeking to add their 20th-century contribution to the corpus of hymns used down the years by churches of all traditions. And there were those who introduced a new style of "worship song" designed to appeal to today's congregations. Kaan was impatient with… Go to person page >

Tune

ACCEPTANCE

ACCEPTANCE, by John Ness Beck (b. Warren, OH, 1930; d. Columbus, OH, 1987), was published as a four-part anthem to "Help Us Accept Each Other" (1977) by Fred Kaan (PHH 277). The tune features a consistently syncopated rhythmic pattern in each of its four lines. The unison melody should be sung with…

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NYLAND

NYLAND, named for a province in Finland, is a folk melody from Kuortane, South Ostrobothnia, Finland. In fact, the tune is also known as KUORTANE. NYLAND was first published with a hymn text in an appendix to the 1909 edition of the Finnish Suomen Evankelis Luterilaisen Kirken Koraalikirja. It gaine…

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BARONITA


Timeline

Media

The United Methodist Hymnal #560
Worship and Rejoice #596

Instances

Instances (9)TextImageAudioScore
Chalice Hymnal #487Text
Lift Up Your Hearts: psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs #318Image
Presbyterian Hymnal #358TextImage
Sing Joyfully #127TextImage
The New Century Hymnal #388Image
The United Methodist Hymnal #560TextImageAudioScore
The Worshiping Church #437TextImage
Together in Song: Australian Hymn Book II #648
Worship and Rejoice #596TextImageAudioScore