Our Lord,
You Were Sent
FOUNDATION
11.11.11.11 “How Firm a Foundation”
Our Lord, you were sent to a place wild and vast
To ponder your mission, to pray and to fast;
Then hungry and weary, you faced night and day
The subtle temptations to turn from
God’s way.
How could it be wrong to want bread on the shelf?
To seek, in one’s serving, to first serve one’s self?
But by God’s own word you remained ever sure:
It’s only in God that our lives are secure.
How could it be wrong to step out and to dare,
To prove with great drama the depths of God’s care?
But you knew God’s word, true since all time began:
It’s wrong to expect God to work by our plan.
How could it be wrong to just once bow the knee,
To shake hands with sin to achieve
victory?
Yet you made it clear that no matter the cost:
Your path was obedience, your
way was the cross.
Our Lord, in your struggle you chose to obey;
God’s word filled your heart and you trusted God’s
way.
Now risen, you save us from
sins that destroy;
You give us your Spirit, your peace and your joy.
Biblical Texts: Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke
4:1-13
Tune: American Folk Melody, Funk’s Genuine Church
Music, 1832
Text: Copyright © 2000 by Carolyn Winfrey
Gillette. All rights reserved.
Email: bcgillette@comcast.net
Please email Carolyn for permission to use her hymn: bcgillette@comcast.net
Carolyn Winfrey Gillette is the author of Gifts of Love: New Hymns for Today’s Worship (Geneva
Press, 2000) and co-pastor of the Limestone Presbyterian
Church in Wilmington, Delaware (starting August 2004) after serving as the
co-pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Pitman, NJ for ten years.
A complete list
of her hymns can be found at http://www.firstpresby.org/hymnlist.htm
The Presbyterian Church in
the