Hymns by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette
Open wide your heavens! Let your name be known!
So the world will know, Lord, we are not alone.
You who once did awesome deeds — show your presence here!
Open wide your heavens! Let us know you're near.
In this Advent season, Lord, we wait and pray:
Why do you seem hidden? Are you far away?
Though your faithfulness is sure, we have often sinned;
Like the leaves we're fading, carried by the wind.
Carried by our culture, we seek more and more;
As we long to prosper, we forget the poor.
As we yearn for earthly things, we forget your name.
Open wide your heavens! Make us whole again.
Lord, you are the potter; we are simply clay.
Take the lives we offer; mold us more each day.
In this holy Advent time, show us all anew:
You reach out and bless us, when we wait for you.
The Presbyterian Outlook magazine commissioned this hymn and sells it ($9.95) with the hymn text and music together as a downloadable bulletin insert. Your purchase helps support this excellent religious magazine.
Consider buying these books for yourself, your church library and your public library, where they have the potential of touching the lives of people you might never meet.
- Daily Feast: Meditations from Feasting on the Word, Year B, edited by Kathleen Long Bostrom and Elizabeth F. Caldwell, is a wonderful, new (2011) daily devotional that contains Scripture passages for the coming Sunday from the lectionary, excerpts from these very popular commentaries for reflection, a response, and a prayer. Additional material is provided for each Sunday.
- Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 1, Advent through Transfiguration, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, looks at each lectionary passage from the four perspectives (exegetical, theological, pastoral and homiletically) by great pastoral preachers, seminary professors of Bible and preaching.
- Something Is About To Happen: Sermons for Advent and Christmas, by Thomas G. Long, is a wonderful collection of sermons by one of today's best preachers on the Advent passages for Year B. Long is currently professor of preaching at Chandler School of Theology after previously teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary.
- The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke by Raymond E. Brown is the classic study of the Christmas stories by a top Catholic biblical scholar who taught for many years at Union Seminary in New York.
- Preaching God's Transforming Justice: A Lectionary Commentary, Year B, edited by Ronald J. Allen, Dale P. Andrews and Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm, looks at each Sunday's lectionary texts from social justice perspectives as well as additional special days (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Earth Day, etc.). Writers are pastors, social writers and seminary professors of preaching, Bible and ethics.
- An Adult Christ at Christmas: Essays on the Three Biblical Christmas Stories — Matthew 2 and Luke 2 by Raymond E. Brown is a very readable book for people in the pews (and pastors in pulpits) filled with insights on the Christmas stories (sort of a Reader's Digest Condensed Version from this top biblical scholar's classic 753-page The Birth of the Messiah).
- The People's New Testament Commentary by M. Eugene Boring and Fred B. Craddock is a wonderful single volume commentary that Carolyn used in teaching a course for commissioned lay pastors and is one she recommends to all pastors and lay people.
- Check out the rest of this web site for other wonderful hymns.
- Consider buying Carolyn's two books of hymns that give permission to use the book's hymns in a local church: Gifts of Love: New Hymns for Today's Worship by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette (Geneva Press, 2000) and Songs of Grace: New Hymns for God and Neighbor by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette (Upper Room Books, 2009)
- Share the hymn and her hymns web site with people in your church and other online friends in other churches.
- Check out A Dozen Ways to Support Carolyn's Hymn-writing (including hymn use permission).