And the Winner Is...
To the delight of all Irish Lutherans, the favorite hymn of St. Paul Lutheran School of Hamel, as voted by her school children, is I Bind Unto Myself Today.
St. Patrick’s Breastplate knocked off Lord, Thee I Love With All My Heart, The Church’s One Foundation, For All the Saints, O God, O Lord of Heaven and Earth, and in the final round, Abide with Me. I’m glad the Pastor gets to pick the hymns for Sunday.
Every Friday to close the school week, we have a hymn sing. Just a few moments ago the children sang the winner. You can check out the winner’s reveal and hear the children sing the hymn here.
If you are wondering where the uniforms were today- this last day of National Lutheran Schools Week the children were able to wear jeans and a shirt bearing the logo of a Lutheran school, church, or some other Lutheran organization. My favorite shirt was this one of the Evangelical-Lutheran Hunting Club of Saline, Montgomery, and Other Counties.
I’m thankful our blessed congregation sees her school as the nursery of our Holy Faith; especially thankful for our faithful teachers and kantor. I’m also thankful to God that my own children are learning to sing to the Lord a new song (Ps. 96:1) in a truly Lutheran school.
We begin each day with chapel. Matins is ordinarily prayed Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday with the Divine Service every Wednesday. This week we observed The Festival of St. Timothy on Monday, The Conversion of St. Paul on Tuesday, and the Festival of St. Titus on Wednesday. So this National Lutheran Schools week our children started their day with the Divine Service three times and prayed Matins twice. I teach the catechism to all our classes. This year the vicar is teaching Old Testament to the upper grades (and this semester the Large Catechism to 6th-8th grades), and Pastor Weedon is teaching the Gospels to grades 3 through 8. The children are learning the Bible, the Catechism, and their hymnal. They are able to pray the Pater Noster and the daily prayers from the Catechism in Latin as they learn that language. They read the classics of the West, are grounded in the grammar of each subject, and they even do pretty well in athletic competition. As we face ever intensifying opposition from the world, we are preparing God’s children to live Holy Lives of Faith and Love according to their stations in life through the gift of truly Lutheran Classical Education.
Our Lutheran School has been instructing God’s children with His blessing since 1857. Our congregation operates it by the tithes and offerings given in faith and thanksgiving, as our parents are not charged tuition. Operating a school in this way is not easy, it takes devotion, commitment and much sacrifice on the part of parents, teachers and the entire congregation. But in our school we are raising up the Baptized to be confessing Lutheran children, who, instructed in wisdom, virtue and godly knowledge, are bound to the Holy Name of God. They will be children who are able to fight off the demon snares of sin, the vice that gives temptation force, the natural lusts that war within, the hostile foes that mar my course (LSB 604:4), and sing that Salvation is of Christ the Lord. (LSB 604:5).