# 34 BEAUTIFUL MUSIC

Sunday night Grand Daughter # 1 and I went to a concert at Knox Church. It was not an unmitigated pleasure. The benches were painfully hard and since Grand Daughter was ready to go home after the first 10 minutes – her powers of music appreciation are only just developing! – I was glad we sat in the balcony.

Away from observation I was less conscious of her wiggling and could instead, contemplate the beautiful words of Carl Heinreich Graun’s “The Death of Jesus.”

7. ARIA

Lord, I pray You, give me power,
so that in temptation's hour,
full obedience I would give,
for my Saviour i would live.
On your mercy I am casting
all my fallen self for grace.

You whose death was in my place, 
Christ, my Lord, the everlasting,
Christ, my life, my joy unending,
all my hope on You depending,
Move me Lord to sing Your praise,
and sustain me all my days.

But the MOST BEAUTIFUL part of the service was our congregational response at the end after the cantata was finished. We all sang together the hymn Here is Love, Vast as the Ocean.

With the stringed instruments and the choir’s descant soaring above our conjoined voices it was perhaps a glimpse of heaven.

In Toronto these musical opportunities may be expected but even though most of my life has been lived “out in the sticks”, looking back, I see that I have at every point been blessed with access to good music.

From my earliest childhood in rural Connecticut, through our college years on the Canadian prairie, and then our long sojourn in rural Japan I have enjoyed a rich musical heritage. I am so very blessed.