Public Holiday!

Hello, friends! Today is a public holiday in South Africa, and a great one, at that. Today is Human Rights Day, intended to commemorate the apartheid struggle and to bring light to every day issues of human rights. In honor of this important day, I wanted to share with you the first two verses of a favorite hymn of mine and my family’s. Hope you enjoy it!

This is My Song
Words: Lloyd Stone, 1943
Music: Jean Sibelius, 1899
Copied from The United Methodist Hymnal

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is,
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

Human Rights Day is a really important day in South Africa which is used as further catharsis in the painful journey through and out of apartheid. Too bad the US doesn't have a similar day, don't you think? On this Human Rights Day, remember not only the importance of respecting the human rights of those in other lands but also the every day acts that honor or besmirch human rights in your own life.