[Kathy in Alaska]

A PRAYER OF PROTECTION

The light of God surround you
The love of God enfold you
The power of God protect you
The presence of God watch over you
Wherever you are,God is,
And all is well.
Amen.

.

Bless This House

Bless this house O Lord we pray;
Make it safe by night and day;
Bless these walls so firm and stout,
Keeping want and trouble out:
Bless the roof and chimneys tall,
Let thy peace lie over all;
Bless this door, that it may prove
ever open to joy and love.


Bless these windows shining bright,
Letting in God's heav'nly light;
Bless the hearth a'blazing there,
with smoke ascending like a prayer;
Bless the folk who dwell within,
keep them pure and free from sin;
Bless us all that we may be
Fit O Lord to dwell with thee;
Bless us all that one day we
May dwell O Lord with thee.

.

(Click on praying hands above,
or on banner at the top to hear the music)

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[andysandmikesmom]

Thanks for the words and music to 'Bless This House'...this is one of my favorite songs....

I learned this song in public grade school, duing the late 1950s...our whole class just loved this song, and altho it is appropriate year round, we always especially found it touching around Thanksgiving, which is when we sang it more than ever...

When I was in public grade school, in 5th grade, we had a wonderful teacher....at the end of the school day, usually the last 1/2 hour, our teacher used that last 1/2 hour, either for punishment or reward time, based on how the class as a whole behaved during the rest of the school day...if the class was in general rowdy and bad all day, and just had our teacher at her wits end, she might 'punish' us, by giving a pop quiz on something, or making us write a boring short theme...

But if we were good, we then got a reward...most times, the reward was to listen to the teacher, as she read aloud from a novel that she had picked out...the novel would have been something not on our list of required reading, but something that our teacher thought we would enjoy and should read...most kids got their own copies of whatever novel she was reading, and would read along with her, as she read out loud...(WE loved her reading out loud, as she dramatized the whole thing, and made it interesting to all the students, even the slackers).....

Then when she was done reading for the day, and it was almost time for the bell to ring to let us out, she would then ask us which song we would like to sing, and she would play it on the piano, and we would sing along...very, very often, we wanted to sing 'Bless This House'...rarely can I hear that wonderful song, without going back to my youth and my schoolhood days, and that wonderful teacher...

Try to teach that song to grade school students today, and watch someone object about their civil rights being violated...

By the way, this teacher always had the most well behaved classes during her teaching career at that school...she knew how to make us love learning, love reading and love singing...and often us kids, would chastize those in our class who were acting up, because we did not want to miss our reading and singing at the end of class...

Again, thanks for that wonderful song...