Words: , cir­ca 1939:

At my first church after sem­in­a­ry which was the Cal­va­ry Meth­od­ist Church in San Jo­se, Cal­i­for­nia, I be­came ac­quain­ted with a man who was head of one of the mu­sic de­part­ments in one of the jun­ior high schools. He said to me one day that he would like to write a hymn tune if I would write the words…I was a young preach­er just start­ing out and tried to ex­press my feel­ing of the main Christ­ian theme of that par­ti­cu­lar per­i­od. The young peo­ple here and there be­gan to get hold of it and it became a fair­ly pop­u­lar hymn in Cal­i­for­nia. Then it spread here and there and I was quite thrilled when they sang it one night in Aus­tral­ia at a youth ral­ly where I spoke a cou­ple of years ago.

Gerald H. Kennedy, 1966

Music: Un­ser Herr­scher, , 1680.