O Christ, Your Heart Compassionate, ELW 722
1 O Christ your heart, compassionate, bore ev’ry human pain
Its beating was the pulse of God; its breadth, God’s vast domain
The heart of God the heart of Christ combined in perfect rhyme
To write God’s love in human deeds, eternity in time
2 As once you welcomed those cast down and healed the sick, the blind
So may all bruised and broken lives through us your help still find
Lord, join our hearts with those who weep that none may weep alone
And help us bear another’s pain as though it were our own
3 O Christ, create new hearts in us that beat in time with yours
That, joined with faith from your great heart, become love’s open doors
We are your body, risen Christ; our hearts, our hands we yield
That through our life and ministry your love may be revealed
4 O love that made the distant stars, yet marks the sparrow’s fall
Whose arms stretched wide upon a cross embrace and bear us all
Come, make your church a servant church that walks your servant ways
Whose deeds of love rise up to you, a sacrifice of praise!
Devotion
Sundays are days set aside for praise. Little Easters, we sometimes call them, when Alleluias drown out all other utterances of grief and despair. On that first Easter, Mary’s tears were transformed into a bold declaration of the risen Christ. When we gather for worship in the presence of that same risen Christ, our hearts and minds are similarly emboldened by scripture, prayer, the Word proclaimed, and songs sung by hearts that are free.
When I sing hymn #722, I am reminded of the many ways that God continues to move and share God’s loving heart in creation. It is a heart that continues to create, is ever reaching out to free those enslaved by sin, ready to forgive, holding a broken world together, and dying once and for all so that creation is redeemed. As we, like Mary, are called to proclaim that resurrection truth, may we do so boldly and lovingly. This, indeed, is our sacrifice of praise!
Prayer
We are your body, risen Christ; our hearts, our hands we yield, that through our life and ministry your love may be revealed. Amen.