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BONUS BLOG Give Thanks: Three Things

November 21, 2023

Admittedly lengthy but well worth your time this Thanksgiving Week here in the USA….

Three things re: the song Give Thanks. It’s a special favorite song of son LJ4, and I’m sure he picked it up from the United Methodist resource The Faith We Sing in the early 2000s.

First:

from songscoops.blogspot.com/2010

and https://hymnary.org/person/Smith_H1

Henry Smith must have seen life this way: God’s side of the equation outweighs whatever is on the opposite side. At least, that’s what the words he wrote indicate. God is the ‘all’ of existence, so that I am called to ‘give thanks’ six times in the song’s opening words. When I’m done here on planet Earth, all that will matter is what lies ahead – in God’s presence.

That must have been alluring for Henry Smith, who was struggling to find steady work, despite having just earned his college degree. When he says ‘the poor’ are rich in “Give Thanks”, that’s an echo from his difficulty in finding work.

His eyesight was also failing because of a degenerative condition that would eventually leave him legally blind, certainly a ‘weakness’ that he expressed in the song as his eyesight faded.

Thankfully, theological training informed him that God’s side of the equals sign was what mattered. And other parts of his life further motivated the song that leapt from his heart. He’d found someone to love, his future wife. And, he was grateful to be through school, which his deteriorating vision had made difficult, and to be back home in a church he loved in Williamsburg, Virginia.

If God was all Henry Smith had in 1978, He could be praised, and yet He provided even more. It’s no surprise that Smith’s heart overflowed in a song.

And, the song resounds still in Henry Smith’s hometown and around the globe today.

Second:

from our own Michael Hawn

(https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/history-of-hymns-give-thanks-with-a-grateful-heart)

Henry Smith Jr. (b. 1952) has composed approximately three hundred worship songs, but “Give Thanks” (1978) is the only one to be published and extensively recorded. During the early years of the song’s use, the composer was unknown. Occasionally credit was ascribed to someone else. Smith was born in Crossnore, North Carolina. Though he started piano lessons in his early years, his brother’s guitar piqued his interest in music. He taught himself to play by reading a guitar manual and soon began composing songs. 

During his years as a student at King’s College (Bristol, Tennessee), music became more important to him, deciding that “I only wanted to write songs for Christ” (Terry, 2002, p. 58). “Give Thanks” was written in 1978 in response to a sermon given by the pastor at Williamsburg New Testament Church (Virginia), preaching on 2 Corinthians 6:10. Soon afterward, Henry and his future wife Cindy sang the song at the church on several occasions. A military couple attending the church took the song with them to Germany, where they were stationed. The song then developed a life of its own.

It was not until 1986 that a friend brought Smith a cassette tape of a recording of the song by Integrity Music, who had listed the author as “unknown.” Henry Smith contacted the publisher. They informed him that they had been trying to locate the composer because the song had been recorded more than fifty times and published in several collections. The song first appeared as an octavo, “Give Thanks” (Mobile, AL, 1978). Donald Hustad’s The Worshiping Church (Carol Stream, IL, 1990) may have been the first standard hymnal to carry it. Evangelical British/American hymnwriter Bryan Jeffery Leech (1931–2015) heard the song at Billy Graham’s “Mission England” Crusade in 1989 and recommended it to the hymnal committee (Hustad, 1990, no. 496). It started to spread beyond Evangelicals. Twenty-first-century hymnals continue to publish the song, attesting to its sustained use. 

Contemporary Christian artist Don Moen (b. 1950) met Henry Smith in Washington, D.C., at an Integrity Music conference and played a recording of the song in Russian. “My wife and I began to weep. We were overwhelmed to hear my song in that language. Moen had no idea we were in the audience” (Terry, 2002, p. 59).

The song’s strength lies in the text’s biblical foundation, rhetorical construction, and the music’s coherence. The biblical underpinnings are cited above. The effective repetition of the imperative “Give thanks” at the beginning of three successive lines in the first part of the refrain (anaphora) has a cumulative effect. The composer repeats section one, giving a total of six reiterations of “Give thanks.” The scriptural basis for whole-hearted thanks is abundant throughout the Psalms (9:1; 86.12; 111:1; 138:1). The second part of the refrain continues effectively with “let the weak” and “let the poor” in successive lines. Each section concludes with a “because” clause that balances the anaphora of the earlier phrases: “because he’s given Jesus Christ his Son” (section one); “because of what the Lord has done for us” (section two). 

Carl Daw Jr. identifies the characteristics of the effective melody: “Much of the coherence of this tune comes from the use of sequences. The second phrase, for example, is a third-lower sequence of the first phrase. Then in the repeated middle section there are three successive phrases, each one step lower than the preceding one” (Daw, 2016, p. 615). In short, the song is a perfect blend of simplicity, symmetry, and artistry.

Henry Smith composed the song during a time of unemployment, financial insecurity, and an uncertain future due to a degenerative visual impairment that would eventually lead to his becoming legally blind. No doubt he found strength in Paul’s words, “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10, NIV).

“Give Thanks” is truly an international song of gratitude. Selected YouTube presentations follow:

SOURCES:

David Cain, “Give Thanks—Henry Smith,” Song Scoops (October 23, 2010), https://songscoops.blogspot.com/2010/ (accessed September 4, 2021). 

Carl P. Daw Jr. Glory to God: A Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016).

Donald P. Hustad, ed. The Worshiping Church: Worship Leader’s Edition (Carol Stream, IL: 60188).

Lindsay Terry, The Sacrifice of Praise (Nashville: Integrity Publishers, 2002).

Third and finally:

those lyrics themselves

[Chorus]
Give thanks with a grateful heart
Give thanks to the Holy One
Give thanks because He’s given
Jesus Christ His Son

[Verse]
And now let the weak say I am strong
Let the poor say I am rich
Because of what the Lord has done for us
And now let the weak say I am strong
Let the poor say I am rich
Because of what the Lord has done for us


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