More Love to Thee

John 15:12-15
’This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

 More love to Thee, O Christ

1.      More love to Thee, O Christ, More love to Thee! Hear thou the prayer I make On bended knee!
This is my earnest plea More love, O Christ, to Thee,
More love to Thee, more love to Thee, More love to Thee, more love to Thee!

2.      Once earthly joy I craved, Sought peace and rest. Now, thee, alone I see Give what is best.
This all my prayer shall be, More love, O Christ, to Thee,
More love to Thee, more love to Thee, More love to Thee, more love to Thee!

3.      Then shall my latest breath, Whisper Thy praise. This be the parting cry My heart shall raise!
Still all my prayer shall be, More love, O Christ, to Thee,
More love to Thee, more love to Thee, More love to Thee, more love to Thee!

Elizabeth Prentiss

Sometimes you remember hymns not from the hymnals they came from but because of how you first heard them and their affect on you.  This is one of those. One day while listening to Fernando Ortega’s version (see below), it snuck up on me like an old friend. And as soon as I heard it, I remembered it, both as a hymn that touched my heart and spoke to me but also as one that spoke about me.  Elizabeth Prentiss, who wrote it, was the wife of a well-known presbyterian pastor. A person of deep faith, she was a champion of Sunday School before it was cool. She was also a noted hymn writer and educator.  But she suffered from chronic asthma and severe, debilitating, sinus headaches for most of her life, as did I.  This is why I remembered the hymn.  Prentiss died young, at age 59, from an asthma attack. After she died, her husband wanting to honor her memory chose this hymn (one of her earliest) to be sung at her funeral.  Because, as he later wrote, “she was always praying, and this was her prayer put to music.”  Imagine the power this hymn had on a 10-year-old asthmatic; Then shall my latest breath, whisper Thy praise. This be the parting cry my heart shall raise! Still all my prayer shall be, more love, O Christ, to Thee, more love to Thee, more love to Thee!”

Prayer:  More love to thee, O Christ. With our final, failing, fleeting breath, we whisper our praise; more love to thee!  Amen!

 Here is the Fernando Ortega Version: