Because I Have Been Given Much
219

Text: Grace Noll Crowell (1877–1969); altered
Music: Phillip Landgrave (b. 1935)
Tune name: SEMINARY

The world’s wealth increases, yet “ye have the poor always with you” (Matthew 26:11). In this hymn, new to the 1985 hymnbook, we joyfully promise to share both our material wealth and our loving compassion with those who have less. Such a sharing is “thanks indeed,” the most meaningful way we can show the Lord that we are gratefully aware of our blessings.

Verse one mentions “bounty” and “gifts” in general terms. Verse two tells more specifically what these gifts are: shelter, warmth, food. Verse three is crucial to the sense of this hymn: the sharing of love and emotional support is just as important as the sharing of temporal things, though usually more difficult.

In his poem titled “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Experience, English poet William Blake cries out against a society that thinks its hungry children are adequately cared for when they are “fed with a cold and usurous hand.” The hunger may be removed, but when the hand that offers the food is “cold and usurous” (usurious— profit- motivated or self- interested), the sharing does not bless the giver.

The author noted in 1940: “I wrote the poem [originally titled ‘The Shared Loaf’] after a long and serious illness. I was convalescing, and in a sudden, glad up- rush of gratitude for my release from pain, recalling the many mercies and blessings that had been mine those long hard days, and through all my past life, remembering the love that had been around and about me ever, I wrote the words of this hymn. Surely I have been given much; surely love has been showered upon me. God grant I may never forget to ‘divide my gifts with every brother that I see who has the need of help from me,’ and I trust I shall not hoard the love that has been so abundantly showered upon me” (John Barnes Pratt, Present Day Hymns and How They Were Written [New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1940], 27).

The original third verse is as follows:

Because Love has been lavished so
Upon me, Lord,
A wealth I know that was not meant
For me to hoard—
I shall give love to those in need,
The cold and hungry clothe and feed,
Thus shall I show my thanks indeed.

If the congregation were to sing a revised version of the first verse, substituting plural pronouns we and us for I and me, they would find that the hymn is not nearly as strong. When we sing it as it is written, we are making a personal and an individual commitment.

Note that the hymn is written to be sung in unison. The keyboard left hand (bass clef) is written as an accompaniment and is not suitable for singing in parts.

The tune name, SEMINARY, honors the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina, where the composer was both a student and a teacher.