With Voices United, Our Praises We Offer will highlight the theme of Thanksgiving worship at 10:30 a.m. this Sunday, November 19 as the congregation, two choirs and keyboard instrumentals join musical forces at Tyrone Presbyterian Church.
At the outset of the Thanksgiving service, the congregation will unite their voices to sing Julia Cady’s revised Dutch gratitude hymn composed for Thanksgiving morning services at New York City’s Brick Presbyterian Church. Tyrone Presbyterians selected stanza three of Julia Cady’s revised Thanksgiving hymn as the theme of their Thanksgiving 2006 worship, “With voices united our praises we offer / And gladly our songs of Thanksgiving we raise / With You, Lord, beside us / Your strong arm to guide us / To You, our great redeemer / Forever be praised.”
After Pastor Bob Dunkelberger’s declaration of forgiveness, the ten-voice children’s choir from the breakfast and Bible class will unite their voices as church members carry canned and boxed foods for the Tyrone Food Bank to the church altar, colorfully decorated by the Growth and Spiritual Enrichment Committee. Under the direction of Elizabeth Beringer, Scott Hiller, Arlene Sweeney, Rosalee Waring, Mary Lou White, Kimberly Wilson and Betty Woomer, the breakfast and Bible children’s choir will sing Pastor Henry Alford’s hymn of harvest entitled “Come, Ye Thankful People Come.” Originally, Pastor Alford composed this hymn for a British harvest festival, staged in 1844.
Following the children’s choir, the eight voice adult choir will unite in a traditional Welsh melody known as “All Through the Night”, matched with these 1970 lyrics of gratitude by British poet Fred Pratt Green, “For the fruit of all creation, thanks be to God / For good gifts to every nation, thanks be to God / For the plowing, sowing, reaping, silent growth while we are sleeping / Future needs in earth’s safekeeping, thanks be to God.”
At the prelude, the voice of the Baldwin Grand Piano will speak on an anthem of gratitude entitled “Bless this House”. Composed in 1927 by British women Helen Taylor and Mary Brahe, this soaring and majestic song grew popular, thanks to the performances of famed Irish Tenor John McCormack. In Tyrone, “Bless this House” became popular during World War II thanks to the performances of a Tyrone Area High School trio composed of Carol Elder Shope, Marilyn Morrison and Maryann Leeper Merryman, accompanied by Eileen Knarr Ellenberger at the piano.
As the congregation, the two choirs and the instruments unite their voices in praise and gratitude on November 19, the 85 members of Tyrone Presbyterian Church will review American Thanksgiving through the years. Local Presbyterians will remember that in 1621 Governor William Bradford decreed that the Pilgrims commemorate Thanksgiving in gratitude for their humble harvest. Church members will recall that President George Washington declared November 26, 1789 as a national day of Thanksgiving, but the declaration did not get repeated annually. Finally, in the first year of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln named a national harvest for November 26, 1861. From that year onward, the President and State Governors decreed Thanksgiving a national holiday each November for 80 years. Ultimately in autumn 1941, Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt passed a bill naming the fourth Thursday of November as America’s Thanksgiving Day.
In a century when giving thanks seems sometimes out of step with the rhythm of these ungrateful times, Pastor Bob Dunkelberger and Tyrone Presbyterians encourage the people of this community to adopt an attitude of gratitude, to count their many blessings and then to join the Presbyterian congregation, two choirs and keyboard instrumentalists at 10:30 a.m. on November 19, where with voices united their praises and thanks they will offer.
