When I was choosing music for the wedding, I had a bit of a hard time: there was so much that was good, and that I wanted to include, but it was also important that the wedding itself not be completely taken over by the music; also that the service itself wouldn’t go on for too long!
With some regret I limited myself to five hymns and an anthem.
One of my favourite hymns is “O Love divine, how sweet htou art!” sung to Cornwall. But the words are a bit too personal for a wedding: not really appropriate for either couple or congregation to sing on that particular occasion. But I like the tune, too, even if it is SS Wesley being overindulgent with the chromatic inner parts, and I wanted to use it as a nod to the words I know.
I was moaning about this on Twitter, as is my custom, and the result was that Miranda Threlfall-Holmes wrote something to fit the tune. Here are the words:
Unending love and faithfulness
We sing with heartfelt thankfulness
And celebrate today;
Commitment, comfort, honour, joy
Our hearts and minds and tongues employ
And may our lives display.
For God is love: living in love
We live in God, and God above
Our hearts and lives enfolds.
Family and friends to share our bliss (NB, ‘Family’ needs to be sung ‘Fam’ly’!)
Our joy, our heaven on earth is this (Acknowledgement: this line is from Wesley)
All love this love upholds.
“All that I am I give to you
All that I have I share with you”:
These vows fill us with awe.
This promise will be our delight
Our inspiration day and night
From this day evermore.
You’re welcome to use these words if you would like to under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported licence, and you can read more about how they were written at Miranda’s blog.
But now, you can also listen:
That’s Neil Houghton playing the organ, and a church full of Beloved’s and my nearest and dearest, singing their hearts out.