390 Praise to The Lord, the Almighty

People have been singing praises to God for as long as there have been people.  Music has a way of opening one's heart in ways that mere speaking does not.  Beginning with this entry, you will have an opportunity to learn about the "back story" to many of the great hymns of faith and inspiration.

This Sunday we will be singing one of the great songs of Christendom: "Praise to The Lord the Almighty."  The music for this hymn first appeared in a German hymnal or Gesangbuch dating from 1665. The tune is entitled Lobe Den Herren and is only used with this particular hymn text.

The text was written by Joachim Neander who was born in 1650.  Joachim came from a line of four previous Joachim Neanders, all of whom were preachers.  The youngest Joachim did not want to follow in his predecessors' footsteps.  As a matter of fact, when he was 20 years old, he joined a group of rowdy students who wanted to ridicule and scoff at worshipers at St. Martin's Church.  The preacher that night was so persuasive that young Neander was converted that same day.  Later he actually became an assistant preacher at that very same church.

Joachim loved taking nature/worship walks which often became times when he composed hymns which he sang during his walks. One of his favorite walking spots was a beautiful gorge near his home outside of Dusseldorf.  He so loved this valley that eventually it was named for him: the Neander Valley.  The Old German word for "valley" was "tal" or "thal" with a silent "h". When he was 30--the year he died, he wrote this text while battling the tuberculosis that was to kill him: "Praise ye The Lord the almighty the King of creation. O my soul praise Him for He is my strength and salvation."

Two hundred years later, the valley was used as a source for limestone to manufacture cement. In 1856, miners discovered a series of caves containing human bones.  When William King, an Irish professor of anatomy examined the bones, he declared that they were from a race of people who were the "missing link" in evolution.  They are now known as the Neanderthals, a fully human but extinct group of people of great strength. It is somewhat ironic that a man of great faith became linked with a theory that he probably would have rejected: evolution.  That's the back story or one of the favorite hymns and its author who died tragically young.