O God, We Give Thanks for the Saints Gone Before Us

"O God, We Give Thanks for the Saints Gone Before Us" is a new hymn for All Saints Day by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. Celebrating faithful Christians in the past and present, this hymn is also a prayer that we will follow Jesus in the world today. In a time when competing voices in society encourage us to abandon the way of Jesus, we need to remember how he taught us to live.

O God, We Give Thanks for the Saints Gone Before Us

ASH GROVE 6.6.11.6.6.11 D ("Let All Things Now Living")

O God, we give thanks for the saints gone before us —
remembering well how they walked Jesus' Way.
They valued the truth and would rise to defend it.
They knelt to be kind to the poor day by day.
They welcomed in immigrants, honored new neighbors,
put love before greed, and sought peace over strife.
May we in our homes and our churches and nations
recall Jesus' teachings and welcome this life.

O God, we give thanks for the saints now among us —
for teachers and helpers and activists, too,
for those in our families and those who work with us
to make the world better, to make the world new.
We thank you for those who seek justice for others,
for those who seek Jesus and live by his grace.
May we in our homes and our churches and nations
give thanks for their witness of love in this place.

O God, we give thanks for the Way Jesus shows us;
may we seek to follow his reign from above.
The world often calls us to hatred and violence,
but Christ's Way is welcome and mercy and love.
Like prophets, apostles, and martyrs before us,
like those who bear witness to you every day,
may we in our homes and our churches and nations
be saints who are eager to choose Jesus' Way.

Biblical References: Matthew 5:1-12; Matthew 6:33; John 8:31-32; Matthew 25:31-46; 1 Corinthians 1:1-3; Micah 6:8
Tune: Traditional Welsh melody ("Let All Things Now Living")

Text: Copyright © 2024 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved.

Email: [email protected]

New Hymns: www.carolynshymns.com

Permission is given for free use of this hymn to supporters of Sojourners.

Carolyn Winfrey Gillette grew up in a Methodist home with her father, David Winfrey, being a graduate of Drew Seminary and her mother being a volunteer for Church World Service. She was baptized at the Bridgewater (VA) United Methodist Church, confirmed in the Washington Square United Methodist Church in Hagerstown MD, and graduated from UMC-related Lebanon Valley College. Her second book, Songs of Grace, is published by the Upper Room. She is the author of more than five hundred hymns that have been sung by thousands of congregations around the world. Her hymns and are found in twenty books and thousands of websites, including carolynshymns.com. Many of her hymns are published at Sojourners, Christian Century magazine, The New Yorker, National Public Radio, and PBS-TV. She and her husband, Bruce, are ministers who have served congregations in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. Her latest book of forty-five new hymns and meditations is God’s World is Changing: New Hymns for Advent and Christmas.

Written by one of our generation’s leading hymn writers, this Advent devotional is a rich conversation between biblical texts associated with this season and various issues within our rapidly changing contemporary world. Framed by the poetry of Gillette’s modern hymn texts and accompanied by theological meditations and questions for personal or group reflection, this wonderful resource for the four weeks before Christmas deals with the traditional Advent themes of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love but in relationship to our Changing Climate (Hope), Changing Conversations (Peace), a Changing Calling (Joy), and the Changing Church (Love). Additional hymn texts and reflections are provided for “Blue Christmas” or the “Longest Night” for those people in grief or alone at this “happy” time of year. Whether read in solitude or in an online or in-person group, this resource will deepen your engagement with the anticipated coming of the Christ child during the Advent season and inspire you to be Christ’s light for our wounded world today.

- The Rev. Dr. Kathy Black, Professor Emerita, Gerald H. Kennedy Professor of Homiletics and Liturgics, Claremont School of Theology