AN OLD STORY

March 20, 2020, Friday

With more time at home these days, I've resumed a project that I'd set aside several months ago. In a box of miscellaneous documents about the family, I found three pages written in 1886 by a 14-year-old. He had documented his confirmation by writing out four verses of a hymn, followed by the questions and answers from the traditional Lutheran confirmation rite. After some study of the old German handwriting, Don and I figured out that the hymn was titled Mein Schöyfer, steh mir bei or My Shepherd, Stay by Me.

The internet is wonderful, and I soon verified the text of the song, both in German and in English. It was not familiar to me, so I found a YouTube performance of the hymn, a very peaceful and comforting melody. Maybe this message from the past is just what we need today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKmXXGOGdBQ 


Once I had identified the boy who had written out the hymn, and re-read the details of his life from my records, I was slightly taken aback to learn that he had died in the 1919 flu epidemic at the age of 53.