HYMN FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY Showers of Blessings
- Gracia Grindal
- 10 hours ago
- 3 min read
Text: Daniel Webster Whittle (1840-1901) Tune: James McGranaham (1840-1907)
1 There shall be showers of blessing:
This is the promise of love;
There shall be seasons refreshing,
Sent from the Savior above.
Refrain:Showers of blessing,
Showers of blessing we need:
Mercy-drops round us are falling,
But for the showers we plead.
2 There shall be showers of blessing,
Precious reviving again;
Over the hills and the valleys,
Sound of abundance of rain.
[Refrain]
3 There shall be showers of blessing:
Send them upon us, O Lord;
Grant to us now a refreshing,
Come and now honor Thy Word.
[Refrain]
4 There shall be showers of blessing:
Oh, that today they might fall,
Now as to God we're confessing,
Now as on Jesus we call!
THE BEATITUDES
[Refrain]Text: Gracia Grindal Tune: Dan Damon
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REFLECTIONS What we receive from Jesus in his great Sermon on the Mount could be called showers of blessing, as the old Gospel song has it. The eight beatitudes come from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. They are among the most beautiful sayings of Jesus and the whole Bible. To hear them is to be blessed, like one is blessed by a shower after a long drought.
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Jesus begins his ministry showering us with great blessings, powerful words. We are so used to the idea that words are nothing, and things are real, but sound is real, we can feel it in our bodies. So listen to the richness Jesus is bestowing on those sitting around him that day all the way down to us. They cannot be revoked. they will do what he says. Pedants like me call it performative language rather than elaborative, which talks about blessings rather than gives them.
Words are so cheap these days and so manipulative—we weary of all the influencers who are trying to make us do something that benefits them by a clever use of language—that it is hard for us to feel that we are filled with the blessings Jesus is giving us here. But soak them in, he is giving his all for you without your doing anything but listen.
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Fredrick Bruner in his commentary on Matthew connects these firsr words from Jesus in his sermon to the last words at the end of Matthew, where Jesus tells his disciples to go to the whole world with all that he has taught them and given them, among them his blessings.
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Instead of saying simply blessings, maybe we should say, Bless you! Bless your heart! as the southerners say. Maybe we should say it to each other more and more. We know these words of Jesus that we also speak in his name, will not return void. Somehow those sound waves, like showers, will resonate through the flesh and spirit of others and change them. When you do so, "There will be showers of blessings!" Bless you all!
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HYMN INFO
Whittle and McGranahan worked with Dwight Moody and his team to produce songs to sing during their revivals. Whittle, a Massachusetts native who marched with Sherman through Georgia during the Civil War, also went by the pseudonymn El Nathan. Whittle wrote this text in 1883, based on Ezekial 34:26, praying for a spiritual revival. He and McGranahan worked closely together with the Dwright Moody and Ira Sankey Gospel team in Chicago. McGranahan wrote many famous gospel tunes, among them the tune which became Hawaii'i Aloha, now one of the best loved songs in the state..
The hymn below I wrote twenty years ago for the first book of my lectionary hymns, A Treasury of Faith. Dan Damon, the tune writer, set the entire collection to music. Dan plays jazz piano not only in secular venues around San Francisco where he lives, he also play his tunes, many of them jazzy, for the churches he has served. He is now retired and an editor and writer of hymns for Hope Publishing Company.
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LINKS
Showers of BlessingSt. Andrews Church
Andy Harsan
Hear Dan play familiar hymns
Find on Amazon: dan damon come away to the skies, plus many other CDs
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