O Lord, Life Is Sacred

Representative Text

1. O Lord, life is sacred, a gift from above;
Each person is worthy of honor and love.
Your works are so marvelous, we’re wonderfully made;
We each bear Your image, conception to grave.

2. Your hands shaped and formed us before we took breath;
You knit us together and clothed us with flesh.
You give us our life and ordain all our days;
Your works, Lord, are wonderful; we lift our hearts in praise.

3. Upheld since conception and carried since birth,
To old age and hair of gray, we’re still of great worth.
We still bear Your likeness, the stamp of Your hand;
You made us in Jesus for all the works you planned.

4. And so, may we honor each person we meet;
The kindness You’ve shown us, we wish to repeat
From children to agèd—we’ll serve them in Your name;
As You honor us, O Lord, we pledge to do the same.

Source: The Cyber Hymnal #5108

Author: Susan H. Peterson

Born: Oc­to­ber 17, 1950, Port An­ge­les, Wash­ing­ton. Died: Ju­ly 23, 2004, Per­al­ta, New Mex­i­co. Susan was the se­cond of two girls in the fam­i­ly. Her fa­ther worked for the Na­tion­al Park Ser­vice, so Su­san en­joyed grow­ing up in Na­tion­al Parks and His­tor­ic Sites across Amer­i­ca. She did her un­der­grad­u­ate work at Stan­ford Un­i­ver­si­ty and earned a BS in ma­the­ma­tics in 1972. The next year she took a one-year grad­u­ate pro­gram at Mult­no­mah School of the Bi­ble in Port­land, Or­e­gon, and re­ceived a Cer­tif­i­cate of Bi­ble up­on com­ple­tion. She de­cid­ed not to pur­sue a ca­reer in com­put­er sci­ence, as she had orig­in­al­ly inÂ… Go to person page >

Text Information

First Line: O Lord, life is sacred, a gift from above
Title: O Lord, Life Is Sacred
Author: Susan H. Peterson (1998)
Meter: 11.11.11.11
Language: English
Copyright: Released to the public domain

Tune

GORDON (Gordon)

In 1870 Featherstone's text came to the attention of Adoniram J. Gordon (b. New Hampton, NH, 1836; d. Boston, MA, 1895), an evangelical preacher who was compiling a new Baptist hymnal. Because he was unhappy with the existing melody for this text, Gordon composed this tune; as he wrote, "in a moment…

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The Cyber Hymnal #5108
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The Cyber Hymnal #5108

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