This page is provided so that you can hear the tunes of items which we use in church. Mostly they are written by the vicar. Please note that they are copyright - we are very happy to give permission to you to use them, but we would like to hear about it. Please include any use on your Christian Copyright Licence returns.
Down this page:
- the words,
- the story,
- the sheet music,
- media player.
If God had not been with us
If God had not been with us
If God had not been with us,
if God had not been with us,
if God had not been with us
on that dreadful day,
when angry men waylaid us,
and evil things dismayed us,
their lashings would have flayed us,
we'd be swept away.
But praise to God who saved us,
who rescued and forgave us,
who pardoned and delivered us
from all our chains,
We have escaped like sparrows
from all their slings and arrows,
when chances seemed so narrow,
so we'll praise his name.
If God had not been with us,
if God had not been with us,
if God had not been with us
on that dreadful day,
when rivers rose in rages
and torrents came in surges,
the floods would have submerged us,
carried us away.
But praise to God who saved us ...
Words and music copyright © John Hartley 2009. All rights reserved.
Based on Psalm 124.
Story behind the song
This is a straightforward attempt to set Psalm 124 as a song. There are two kinds of disasters envisaged in verses 2-5 of the psalm: the evil of men and the natural disasters of the world - in the psalm they are mixed up together, but I thought it might be clearer to separate them out into the two verses.
John Hartley.
Windows Media Player. When you click the left-hand "play" button your computer should have started to play the tune. If it didn't, you might be able to get the tune by clicking here, or by right-clicking the link, choosing "save target as", saving it onto your computer, and then opening it with a music-playing program.
Please remember that a midi file of a tune isn't supposed to be a state-of-the-art musical arrangement - it is only supposed to give a basic idea of how the tune goes. Any reasonable organist / keyboard player / music group could make it sound far better.