#685: Take My Life, That I May Be

So this is kind of interesting. The music here is the original one for this text--the composer and lyricist are father and daughter, respectively, which is adorable. However, the text was later adapted to a different tune, which will appear elsewhere. And I don't mean "the next song in this section, we'll get to it when we get to it," but "in another section entirely!"

My choir has sung a third arrangement of it, which is fairly easy except it slooooows doooooown every couple verses so we always had to watch that.

The verb "take" covers a lot of ground in English--the intended interpretation is asking God to take our various body parts and use them for God's own will, but it's not too hard to twist into "take away," as in, we need to be ready to sacrifice anything for God. Which I guess wouldn't be so bad if it was a little easier to perceive God's plan in the midst of everything.

Edit: I just realized, the lyricist is named Frances (female) and she had a brother named Francis (male). And I thought my parents were asking for trouble with similar-name choices, yowzer.