Over Lutheran coffee last Sunday, our leader said, 'I wonder why "We Gather Together" isn't in any hymnals.'

'We can do it,' I said, 'I'll make copies.'

I first heard 'We Gather Together' at a very young age, in school. Today I have the tune & chords in my book of piano music. It always seems like such a tranquil, graceful tune. When I play it, I picture a Dutch shore with distant seabirds over the water.

Well! I went to the Cyberhymnal and saw that the usual words are of the 'church militant' type and are supposedly in celebration of a battle. I have a interest in that type of music, so I modified the verses to sound more Christian and more thankful, so as to fit in better during the weeks before Thanksgiving.

We have some Chinese members, so another thing I did was eliminate words with 'th' in them when they weren't strictly necessary. Life is hard enough for them without th's. Another thing I like to do is eliminate capital letters. I find that extraneous capital letters (such as at the beginning of a line of poetry which is not the beginning of a sentence) make text harder to read.

1.We ga-ther to-ge-ther to ask the Lord's bles-sing;
He ha-stens and cha-stens his will to make known.
Grief and woe pres-sing, he cea-ses their dis-tres-sing.
Sing prai-ses to his name; he for-gets not his own.

2.Be-side us to guide us, our God with us join-ing,
Or-dain-ing, main-tain-ing his king-dom di-vine;
So from the be-ginn-ing his mer-cy we were win-ning;
O, Lord, be ev-er near, our thanks be thine!

3.We all do ex-tol Thee, O Sa-vior and Tea-cher,
and pray that thou still our Re-deem-er will be.
Let thy con-gre-gat-ion join Hea-ven's ju-bi-la-tion.
Thy name we hon-or here; O Lord, praise to thee!