One Thing I of the Lord Desire

Above:  Grace Episcopal Church, Gainesville, Georgia, July 7, 2018

Image Source = Bill Monk, Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta

Text (1887) by Walter Chalmers Smith (1824-1908)

Hymn Source = The Church Hymnary–Revised Edition (1927), of various Presbyterian denominations

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One thing I of the Lord desire,–

For all my way hath miry been–

Be it by water for by fire,

O make me clean!

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If clearer vision Thou impart,

Grateful and glad my soul shall be;

But yet to have a purer heart

Is more to me.

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Yea, only as the heart is clean

May larger vision yet be mine,

For mirrored in its depths are seen

The things divine.

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I watch to shun the miry way,

And stanch the spring of guilty thought;

But, watch and wrestle as I may,

Pure I am not.

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O wash Thou me without, within,

Or purge with fire, if that must be,–

No matter how, if only sin

Die out in me.

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