From her home in Seattle, Washington, Olive Spannaus writes: “The hymn text was written for the Lutheran Human Relations Association of America early in 1960. The first stanza practically wrote itself. The lines came to me in the midst of my housework, and I quickly picked up a pencil to write them down. The rest of the hymn was done by snatches, and before too long, I knew I was writing the hymn for the LHRA, a group that my husband and I actively support. I sent it to them with a note that I hoped they would have some use for it. ‘If not,’ said the covering letter, ‘then I at least shall have had the fun of writing it.”

They did have use for it, and sang it at the Annual Institute on Human Relations at Valparaiso University in 1960. Each year since then it has been sung at the banquet of the annual institute. In 1965 the hymn came to the attention of the Commission on Worship of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, which published it in the Worship Supplement to their Lutheran Hymnal, where it was set to the tune BEATUS VIR. The author has twice made revisions of the text. Sensing the need for male-female inclusive language, she made slight alterations in stanzas one and two. She has firmly declined permission to change all singular (I, me) constructions to plural (we, us), saying, “Personal relations are and ought to be personal, and therefore individual concern and responsibility!”

Most of the thoughts are taken directly from Philippians 2:1-8, which love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfil ye my begins: “If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of Joy, that ye be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind” (verses 1, 2).

Born January 23, 1916, in St. Louis, Missouri, Olive Wise Spannaus was educated in the public schools and attended Brown’s Business College, where her father was principal. She majored in English and Latin at Washington University, St. Louis; her first employment was as a secretary at Ward Junior High School in University City, Missouri. Married in 1939 to R. E. Spannaus, a graduate of Concordia Seminary (Lutheran), she assisted him in parish ministry in El Monte and Livingston, California, and in Lutheran Child and Family Services in Chicago, Washington, and Seattle. In addition to being a busy wife and mother of four children, Spannaus has served in a number of leadership roles: the first woman elected to the board of directors of the English District of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod; member of the LCMS Task Force on Women (1973-1977); offices at various levels of the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League and the League of Women Voters; and many other church and community organizations. In 1973 she co-authored The Spirit and Me, a series of mini studies from the Bible, and with her husband, authored The Total Woman Versus the Shalom Woman, a comparison of the two books and philosophies. She has written several other published hymn texts and a group of original folk hymns that she uses in her song programs, accompanying herself on the autoharp.

For notes on Frederick C. Maker (1844-1927), the composer of the tune MELROSE, see SDAH 303, ST. CHRISTOPHER. He also wrote the tune REST, SDAH 481.

📖 Reference: Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.