I don’t know about you, but I often have songs running through my head. This time of year, I would expect them to be Christmas songs—and usually they are. This year, however, has been different in many ways, so it seems fitting that the song stuck in my head is also different. Different, yet common. So common that all I have to do is write the first line, and you will probably already start singing along with me:

“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.”

In the life of the church, there are words and melodies that carry us across seasons—across generations, even across the boundaries of joy and sorrow. So familiar that we sometimes sing them almost without thinking, they have a way of surfacing precisely when words of our own feel insufficient.

In recent weeks, that has been true for me.

Christmas draws us again to the manger, to the astonishing truth that God comes to us in weakness and vulnerability. We sing praises surrounded by candlelight and carols, proclaiming with confidence that we “praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” It is a song of joy, of hope renewed, of light shining in the darkness.

But before those Christmas praises came, we gathered for a funeral—to commend a loved one, my father-in-law, into God’s gracious keeping. Not long after, our family was given the gift of new life—two grandchildren born within weeks of each other. One arrived strong and healthy, a reminder of the ordinary miracle of birth. The other entered the world already facing a serious challenge, undergoing open-heart surgery at just one week old. Hospital rooms replaced nurseries for a time. Monitors and waiting rooms replaced the peaceful scenes we imagine when welcoming a child.

And yet, even there, the doxology found its way into prayers—sometimes whispered, sometimes sung. Praise not because the path is easy, but because God is present. Praise not because the outcome is guaranteed, but because our lives—new and old—rest in God’s hands.

This, in many ways, is the story the Lutheran Heritage Center exists to tell. The immigrants whose faith we preserve and interpret lived with the same tensions we do: joy and sorrow, birth and death, uncertainty and hope. They sang the same hymns in log churches and at gravesides. They taught their children to confess the same faith that sustained them in hardship and in thanksgiving alike.

The Common Doxology reminds us that all of life—Christmas joy, funeral grief, anxious waiting, and unexpected blessings—is gathered into God’s praise. It is not a denial of pain, but a confession of trust: trust that the God who came to us in Christ still holds us, still gathers us, and still brings life out of death.

As we continue to welcome visitors, tell stories, and preserve this heritage, may we remember that these hymns and words are not relics of the past. They are living confessions, carried into hospital rooms and sanctuaries, spoken at fonts and graves, at Christmas and in ordinary days.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.

Until next week! Denise Hellwege