Praise To The Lord, The Almighty

This hymn was written by Joachim Neander, born in 1650, whose father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather - all Joachim Neanders - had been preachers of the gospel. But as a student, Joachim was wild and rebellious. At 20, he joined a group of students who descended on St. Martin’s Church in Bremen to ridicule and scoff worshipers. But the sermon that day by Rev. Theodore Under-Eyck arrested him and led him to conversion. A few years later, he was the assistant preacher at that very church.

Joachim often took long walks near his home in Hochdal, Germany. They were worship walks, and he frequently composed hymns as he strolled, singing them to the Lord. He was the first hymnwriter from the Calvinist branch of Protestantism. When he was 30 - the year he died - he wrote this while battling tuberculosis:

Praise Ye The Lord, The Almighty, the King of Creation.

O my soul praise Him, for He is Thy health and Salvation.