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I got a song stuck in my brain last week — not a classic rock tune, but a classic maybe.
We hadn’t sung the hymn “Oh Come Angel Band” or “My Latest Sun is Sinking Fast” in church for a good while. The last time I heard it, in fact, might have been in re-watching the movie “O Brother Where Art Thou.”
Because we hadn’t done it recently, and maybe because some of the younger folks didn’t even know it, it was pretty rough in our a cappella Church of Christ for the first verse. Those of us that knew it picked it up and we finished strong, however.
It’s a great song that has lyrics that suppose what our last minutes on Earth might be like.
Oh, come, angel band,
Come and around me stand;
Oh, bear me away on your snowy wings
To my eternal home;
Oh, bear me away on your snowy wings
To my eternal home.
Bet you recognize it now that you’ve seen the chorus. I might even get it stuck in your head for the next week.
It clanged around in my head long enough that I searched it up on Youtube to see who had recorded the song. Boy was I surprised.
Probably the most popular and well known was The Stanley Brothers Bluegrass version, which was used in the movie. Johnny Cash had a popular one that I didn’t really care that much for, and I love Johnny Cash. A Gospel quartet on the show Hee Haw featuring Roy Clark, Grandpa Jones, Buck Owens and Kenny Price was possibly the one I like the best.
Strangely enough, The ’60s TV rock group The Monkees cut the song as well.
The song was first published in 1860 and it gets used regularly at funerals because of the powerful imagery of the words.
It’s possible that imagery and the fact that I’ve been to way too many funerals lately might be why it stuck with me. I went to one funeral for the mother of a childhood friend and another for one of our closest friends after my wife and I were married.
One had a long life spanning nearly a century and the other was taken too soon by cancer. Both were great writers and each had penned a full book of Christian devotionals. I think they both had that angel band standing around them when they died and both ladies gladly called them in to their bedsides.
I like the old hymns a lot. I know the words and the melodies to a lot of tunes and I don’t mind belting them out in praise as I got the chance to do for both of these ladies.
Even though we didn’t sing “Angel Band,” I felt like it was the last thing I could do for them.
I’ve always been sure I wanted my favorite hymn “How Great Thou Art,” in the song selection at my funeral. I think now I want “Angel Band” added to that list.
My latest sun is sinking fast,
My race is nearly run;
My strongest trials are past,
My triumph is begun.
Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: