Whispering Winds Blog

Last week I posted a blog entry called “Progress.” It was an update on the progress I’m making on my latest writing project, a devotional series based on my favorite hymns. The first part of the series will be a booklet of reflections based on 31 of my favorite Psalm-based hymns. My first draft of last week’s blog post was too long to expect you to read all of it, so I chopped off the last several paragraphs of the post. Here’s the rest of it – what you didn’t get last week.

The next Psalm-based hymn I wrote about in my booklet (after the four hymns based on Psalm 100) is “This Is the Day.” This hymn, written just 50 years ago, is a short, simple song that is a direct quote from the King James Version of Psalm 118:24. Les Garrett put the words of this verse to music. He was a pastor and traveling evangelist, originally from New Zealand.

The music is based on a Fiji folk tune. Musically, it has a simple call and response pattern, which makes it easy to learn, and easy to add verses to. Garrett wrote only the first verse, or should I say copied the words of Psalm 118:24 as verse one. Today the hymn is often published in hymnals with additional verses that have been added anonymously by oral tradition, a good example of the call and response pattern prompting other people to add new verses to a hymn.

One of the books I’m reading as part of my own devotional reading this year is JESUS ALWAYS by Sarah Young. In the “Introduction” to her book, Young writes, “I enjoy singing this short, simple song in the morning, ‘This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.’ It helps me approach the day as a precious gift from God – remembering that every breath I breathe is from Him.”

During my last stay at Christmas Mountain, I re-read Young’s “Introduction,” and I decided to place “This Is the Day” as the next hymn after the four Psalm 100 hymns in my booklet. I’ve adopted Sarah Young’s practice of singing “This Is the Day” every morning as I begin my day. I even started to play with the call and response pattern of the song, and came up with some of my own words.

What can I do, What can I do
to reflect God’s love, to reflect God’s love?
I can be kind, I can be kind
to everyone, to everyone.
What can I do to reflect God’s love?
I can be kind to everyone.
What can I do, What can I do,
to reflect God’s love.

I’m not a hymn writer, but it was a fun exercise, and it reinforced for me that music, and the Psalms in particular, are wonderful gifts from God. “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.”