Would You Bless Our Homes and Families
Music by Ron KlusmeierWords by Walter Farquharson
Tune Name: AITKIN
Lyrics as Poetry
Would you bless our homes and families,
Source of life who calls us here;
in our world of stress and tension
teach us love that conquers fear.
Help us learn to love each other
with a love that constant stays;
teach us when we face our troubles,
love’s expressed in many ways.•When our way is undemanding,
let us use the time that’s ours
to delight in simple pleasures,
sharing joys in gentle hours.
When our way is anxious walking
and a heavy path we plod,
teach us trust in one another
and in you, our gracious God.•From the homes in which we’re nurtured
with the love that shapes us there,
teach us, God, to claim as family
every one whose life we share.
And through all that life may offer,
may we in your love remain;
may the love we share in families
be alive to praise your name.•Let us reach beyond the boundaries
of our daily thought and care
till the family you have chosen
spills its love out everywhere.
Help us learn to love each other
with a love that constant stays;
teach us when we face our troubles,
love’s expressed in many ways.
Words by
Walter FarquharsonCopyright © 1977 by Walter Farquharson
Administered by Hope Publishing Company
Carol Stream, Illinois • USA
Audio Sample
WOULD YOU BLESS
OUR HOMES AND FAMILIES
one verse played on piano
Scripture References
- Luke 2:41-51
- 1 Corinthians 13
Videos
Would You Bless Our Homes and Families
Season, Theme
or Subject
- Family
- Father, Fathering
- Home, Homes
- Human Relationships
- Love∶ human love
- Mother, Mothering
- Relationships∶ relationships with others
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Comments About Song
FROM THE
CANTERBURY DICTIONARY OF HYMNOLOGY
(based on commentary by Margaret Leask)
The hymn reflects the writer’s career as a ‘worker-priest’. Teaching English in the community’s public school while pastoring at Saltcoats United Church, Farquharson observed family and community relationships from two perspectives. The hymn text prays: ‘in our world of stress and tension teach us love that conquers fear’.
Erik Routley commented: ‘His exposition of faith in relation to the stress of family life … is a hymn on the ecology of the home’. First published in Worship the Lord (1977), it became well-known to Canadian congregations through its inclusion in Songs for a Gospel People.
The hymn was included in the American Southern Baptist Baptist Hymnal (1991). The Companion to that book quotes a letter from the author to Harry Eskew, in which Farquharson said that ‘It attempts to celebrate real families, not some ideal family, for pressures are great on a family, whatever its configuration’.
FROM WALTER FARQUHARSON
Without a doubt this has been one of the best loved of the Farquharson/Klusmeier hymns. It was written in 1974 shortly after the death of a brother-in-law in a tragic farm accident. Such times are filled with stress and tension but also very often prove to be an amazing source of health and grace.
Healthy families tend to welcome newcomers with understanding and celebration, and healthy families tend to reach out – from, and as, family serving neighbour and community.
The image of family has often been used to describe communities of faith, but also the human family and even the community of an interdependent creation.