Month: April 2007

BYU Mens Chorus Closing Hymn in April 2007 Priesthood Session

Brandon mentioned how wonderful the closing hymn was in the recent priesthood session of general conference this year. That made want to listen to it again. (If you don’t remember it, they sang a song to the tune of Be Still My Soul, but the lyrics where words from Nephi’s Psalm.) But since the church doesn’t upload the musical numbers in mp3 and they don’t even upload the priesthood session in mp3, you would think I would settle on waiting for the CDs or DVDs to be available at www.ldscatalog.com. Well, sometime I get determined, and such was the case today that led me to find a way.

The church did upload an mp4 file of the priesthood session for ASL (American Sign Language). I downloaded the enormous file and found that the audio is all there as well – and it is the whole session! Now, I hope I didn’t do anything wrong here, but I did a search for a mp4 to mp3 converter and downloaded the first one that looked interesting. After converting the audio to mp3 format, I imported it to Audacity and extracted the closing hymn so I could listen to it over and over again.

Now, if you don’t want to go to all that trouble to hear this masterpiece. You can just download it here.

* UPDATE *

I did a search for the lyrics and found them, plus some additional information about the song. The song is titled “I Love The Lord”. The arrangement is by Ronald Staheli. The lyrics are a paraphrase of 2 Nephi 4 by John Tanner.

I Love the Lord
I love the Lord, in Him my soul delights.
Upon His word, I ponder day and night.
He’s heard my cry, brought visions to my sleep,
And kept me safe o’er deserts and the deep.
He’s filled my heart with His consuming love,
And borne me high on wings of His great dove.

Yet oft I groan, “O wretched man am I”
My flesh is weak and I’m encompassed by
A world of sin, which holds me in it’s thrall,
If I give in and to temptations fall.
Then strength grows slack, I waste in sorrow’s vale;
My peace destroyed, my enemies prevail.

Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin.
Rejoice, my heart! And let me praise again,
The Lord my God, who is my rock and stay
To keep me strict upon His straight, plain way.
Oh let me shake at the first sight of sin
And thus escape my foes without and in.

Condemnation or Salvation

Most Christians are well familiar with John 3:16, as you can often see the verse on posters at football games etc.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The verse following it is not quite as popular, but really stood out to me this morning:

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

This verse is just further evidence of God’s love. Sometimes we can feel we are not worth being loved. It seems we would rather have a pile of rocks heaped upon us that have to stand before God with all our imperfections. But here we are reminded that God did not send his son to condemn us, but rather to save us! This is good news indeed.

I think we can look at our church leaders in a similar manner. Sometimes when we have made mistakes that need to be confessed to our leaders we may be a bit scared thinking leaders may be so appalled that they will kick us out of the church. I feel Bishops are called to help us and allow us to be healed by the atonement rather than to condemn us.