Open are the gifts of God

if you do not hear the tune, click here.

1.
Open are the gifts of God, gifts of love to mind and sense;
hidden is love's agony, love's endeavor, love's expense.

2.
Love that gives, gives evermore, gives with zeal, with eager hands,
spares not, keeps not, all outpours, ventures all, its all expends.

3.
Drained is love in making full, bound in setting others free,
poor in making many rich, weak in giving power to be.

4.
Therefore he who shows us God helpless hangs upon the tree,
and the nails and crown of thorns tell of what God's love must be.

5.
Here is God: no monarch he, throned in easy state to reign;
here is God, whose arms of love, aching, spent, the world sustain.

Words:  W. H. Vanstone, The Risk of Love, 1978
                    © J. W. Stone
   Tune:  Orlando Gibbons, Hymnes and Songs of the Church, 1623

This page is for learning only (some copyrighted material is included here).
Commit the tune & words to memory, then sing from the heart.
Be thankful for the musician's gift, and bless the Lord.

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