#558: Lord God, We Praise You
Nov. 26th, 2019 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lutheranhymnsWhat's going on in the second verse?
A couple things, but in general it consists of requests to God. Including "fit us for your mansions," and "bring us to heaven." ("Fit" in the sense of "make morally fit," not "shrink us down until we can fit in your heavenly houses." Probably.)
Why is this funny/interesting?
The last verse of the Christmas carol "Away in the Manger" has a couple different variants. One version ends "take us to heaven to live with you there," while another says "fit us for..." Pretty similar, right? Well, some people (i.e. my Grandma) have been known to get up in arms about this because "Lutherans believe in grace, yada yada, we should just be asking for God to take us to heaven rather than expecting to be made fit and perfect." So I was amused to see these juxtaposed. (Also I don't have a lot to say about this song.)
A couple things, but in general it consists of requests to God. Including "fit us for your mansions," and "bring us to heaven." ("Fit" in the sense of "make morally fit," not "shrink us down until we can fit in your heavenly houses." Probably.)
Why is this funny/interesting?
The last verse of the Christmas carol "Away in the Manger" has a couple different variants. One version ends "take us to heaven to live with you there," while another says "fit us for..." Pretty similar, right? Well, some people (i.e. my Grandma) have been known to get up in arms about this because "Lutherans believe in grace, yada yada, we should just be asking for God to take us to heaven rather than expecting to be made fit and perfect." So I was amused to see these juxtaposed. (Also I don't have a lot to say about this song.)
But "bring" and "take," those are interchangeable, right?
According to one of my aunts, who turned out to be a lot more prescriptivist than I expected, one of her translation classes insisted that actually they are not. But that's another story.
