Nor Die the Strains of Praise Away

The day you gave us, Lord, is ended;
The darkness falls at your behest;
To you our morning hymns ascended;
Your praise shall hallow now our rest.
We thank you that your church, unsleeping
While earth rolls onward into light,
Through all the world her watch is keeping,
And rests not now by day or night.
As over each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor die the strains of praise away.
John Ellerton


Tonight we turn our clocks back an hour. I would have to turn mine back about four months to really catch up it feels like. I envy the God who lives outside of the time He created. Some time in the future when time itself will 'be no more' I will be as unconfined by its dimension as He is. But for now...

I found the verse above in a devotional I use to pray the hours. My heart was swept up in the "...voice of prayer is never silent, nor dies the strains of praise away." Ellerton was writing about the 24 hr clock that finds the Church in praise and petition. Everywhere on the planet, at any given snippet of time, a voice is uplifted. Somewhere in time may that voice be mine.

Walking the wall, shouting out for God to "Remember", head bowed over a meal, arms around a friend in need, in the visual prayer created on canvas, in the love lines penned in a journal; whispered, shouted or sung, spoken only in the heart or drawn in Spanish-Orange, may I have minutes on the clock that live before Him for a thousand years.

May you have the same.

Tomorrow may you gain a thousand years plus an hour.

Let the Name of the LORD be blessed...from this time forth for evermore. From the rising of the sun to its going down...let the Name of the LORD be praised. Psalm 113:2-3