Hymn Reflection - God, Be with Your Weary People
Unbound composer Benjamin Brody reflects on "God, Be with Your Weary People" by Hannah C. Brown and Sally Ann Morris.
God Be with Your Weary People, by Hannah Brown, reflects the hope found in anticipating Christ’s return, while not neglecting the reality of our own needs and the needs of the world. It is rich in scriptural allusions that make it a particularly good fit for the season of Advent.
The first two stanzas explore familiar Advent themes (weariness and despair leading to a prayer for courage, hunger for righteousness leading to a prayer for peace and sharing). The third stanza unpacks a less-explored theme: hardened people and brittle minds and souls, leading to a prayer for new life and delight. While this is an Advent hymn, it could be meaningful at other times during the year as well, perhaps as a response to sermons around themes of nurturing hope or in services focused on healing. I plan to use it this December in our church’s annual “Longest Night” service. It is a text that merits singing more than once a year.
The text can be sung to HYFRYDOL or other 8 7 8 7 D tunes, but is an absolutely perfect match paired with Sally Ann Morris’s TREASURED. Sally penned this tune without a particular text in mind, but shared it with Mary Louise Bringle who provided its first text, In the Stillness, God of Mercy (also recommended). The tune is in two distinct halves each repeated (AA BB). The first half is fairly subdued, opening with a rising fifth, but never getting further away than rising to a sixth from the opening pitch. The steady slow half notes match well the petitions of the singers in each stanza “God be with your weary/hungry/hardened people”. The second A section builds on the first, addressing God more specifically as “Branch of ages/Bread of life/Source of stirring” deepening and making more specific the prayer stated at the beginning.
Then, in the second half of the hymn, the singer focuses on the community: “We await/have yearned/have longed.” As the prayer becomes more personal, the music intensifies, moving to the relative minor key, with plaintive four-note pattern rising a sixth, then descending a fifth. This rise/fall is repeated three times with each succession descending a step. At the repeat of the B section, we hear this descending pattern again twice before moving back to end with the last phrase mirroring the close of the first half.
This gorgeous tune is so well-crafted that congregations can easily pick it up by the second stanza, and it perfectly balances an intuitive pattern with creative surprises, making it a joy to sing. Its durability is evidenced by the fact that since its first publication in 2016, it has found itself paired with three different texts on UNBOUND (the third being God-Among-Us / Faces and Facets, by Alan Hommerding), as well as two different texts in the recent Voices Together hymnal.
Advent can be a challenging season to plan for, because there are so many classic, beloved seasonal hymns that we and our congregations want to sing, leaving little room for new things. This hymn deserves to be sung alongside those classic hymns of the season, and who knows, 50 years from now, may be considered one of them.
More tunes by Sally Ann Morris
Benjamin Brody is Professor of Church Music and Music Department Chair at Whitworth University, Spokane, Washington. He has published two collections of tunes with GIA, and is a past president of The Hymn Society.
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