A New Hymn: Prayer and Today's News

God Bless the Immigrants

Tune: Faithfulness (“Great is Thy Faithfulness,” without the refrain)

God, bless the immigrants living among us,
working all day in the sun and the heat.
Working on rooftops and bringing the harvest,
they build our homes and provide food we eat.

God, bless the refugees coming to join us,
fleeing from danger and hunger and strife.
They are beloved and valued and precious.
You’re with them here as they seek a new life.

God, bless the aides in our nursing home hallways,
God, bless the families who venture here, too,
God, bless the doctors and students and elders
who came from elsewhere to start life anew.

God bless the newcomers living among us.
God bless the youth who have come here alone.
God bless the migrants with lessons to teach us,
God bless the people who welcome them home.

God bless the immigrants, refugees, strangers,
threatened and slandered, who now live in fear.
May we show mercy, compassion, and kindness.
We are all neighbors; we’re one village here.

Biblical Reference: Leviticus 19:33-34 and Matthew 25:31-46

Tune: William Marion Runyan, 1923 ("Great Is Thy Faithfulness")
Text: Copyright © 2024 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved.
Email: [email protected] New Hymns: carolynshymns.com

Permission is given for free use of this hymn, including online streaming services.

Hymn Note: Recent news has included a lot of misinformation about immigrants. Immigrants are a blessing to their communities and to the nation in many wonderful ways. Most recently, we are thankful for several immigrants who were on the medical team that saved my husband Bruce’s life when he had surgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Center to repair a brain aneurysm. I wrote this hymn this week as a prayer of thanksgiving for the many newcomers who live among us.

For the next two Sundays and during Thanksgiving, Christians will remember in worship services and home devotions some of the early immigrants and how they were welcomed and cared for by those who were already living here. The Zinn Education Project writes, “In 1620, 149 English Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, and survived their first New England winter when the Wampanoag people brought them corn, meat, and other gifts, and taught them survival skills.”

Today’s immigrants and friends are concerned about upcoming plans to do mass deportation with military forces in the new year.

I wrote a hymn in 2010 that tells the biblical stories of refugees and immigrants: "Abraham Journeyed to a New Country." The hymn has been sung by many churches and has been shared by the National Council of Churches, World Council of Churches, and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In a recent interview in Call to Worship journal, I shared a story about this hymn’s impact: “One time, a few years after I wrote the hymn, I was at a conference and a woman came up to me and said, “Last summer I was at a worship service where we sang your song on immigration (“Abraham Journeyed . . .”), and it changed my mind about immigration!” She said she started to see immigrants not as a problem, but as people in need of welcome and love. That is the power of music. Hymns are prayers, and through God’s Holy Spirit, they have the power to change us.”