LYRICS

Walking with Je–sus,  walking  everyday, walking all the way.
Walking with Je–sus, walking with Jesus today.

Walking in the sunshine, walking in the rain.
Walking everyday, walking all the way.
Walking in the sunshine, walking in the rain.
Walking with Jesus today.

Praying with Je–sus,  praying everyday, walking all the way.
Praying with Je–sus,  praying with Jesus today.

Praying in the sunshine, praying in the rain.
Praying everyday, praying all the way.
Praying in the sunshine, praying in the rain.
Praying with Jesus today.

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty
(1680)

Hymn Background:

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Tell me, if you understand.”
Job 38:4

This hymn was written by Jochim Neander, born in 1650, whose father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather– all Joachim Neanders — had been preachers of the gospel. But as a student, Joachim was wild and rebellious. At 20, he joined a group of students who descended on St. Martin’s Church in Bremen to ridicule and scoff the worshippers. But the sermon that day by Rev. Theodore Under-Eyck touched his soul and led to his conversion. A few years later, he was the assistant preacher at that very church.

Joachim often took long walks near his home in Hochdal, Germany. They were worship walks, and he frequently composed hymns as he strolled, singing them to the Lord. He was the first hymnwriter from the Calvinist branch of Protestantism. When he was 30 — the year he died– he wrote this while battling tuberculosis:

“Praise Ye the Lord, The Almighty, the King of Creation.

O my soul praise Him, for He is Thy health and salvation.”

One of Joachim’s favorite walking spots was a beautiful gorge a few miles from Dusseldorf. The Dussel River flowed through the valley, and Joachim Neander so loved this spot that it eventually was named for him — Neander Valley. The Old German word for “valley” was “tal” or “thal” with a silent “h”.

Two hundred years later, Herr von Beckersdorf owned the valley, which was a source for limestone, used to manufacture cement. In 1856, miners discovered caves which contained human bones. Beckerdorf took the bones to a local science teacher who speculated they belonged to one who died in the Flood.

But when William King, an Irish professor of anatomy, saw the bones, he claimed they were proof of evolution’s famous “missing link.”  Other Neanderthal  fossils were  found, and for many years they were used to “prove” Darwin’s theory of evolution. Today we know the Neanderthal was fully human, an extinct people of great strength.

But, as one expert put it, “when Joachim Neander walked in his beautiful valley so many years ago, he could not know that hundreds of years later his name would become world famous, not for his hymns celebrating creation, but for a concept that he would have totally rejected: human evolution.

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty

LYRICS:

1. Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, who rules all creation.
O my soul, worship the wellspring of health and salvation.
All ye who hear, now to God’s temple draw near.
Join me in glad adoration.

2. Praise to the Lord, who o’er all things so wondrously reigneth, 
Who, as on wings of an eagle uplifted, sustaineth.
Hast thou not seen? All that is needful hath been
Granted in what God ordaineth.

5. Praise to the Lord! O let all of earth’s peoples and races,
All that hath life and breath, give thanks for manifold graces.
Let the Amen sound from God’s people again.
Gladly forever sing praises.

Bless Now, O God, the Journey