Three days ago, on October 29, St. Anselm left a comment on "Going to church on Easter Sunday" referencing the Mormon hymn "Called to Serve." As he explained in a follow-up comment, he has no Mormon background but had just searched the hymnal for one with serve in its title so that he could make his joke about "To Serve Man." I replied:
I see. It's probably one of our more iconic hymns, considered the missionary anthem. I'm old enough to remember when the refrain had "Joy our strength will be" instead of "God our strength will be." It was presumably changed to avoid any association with the Nazi organization Strength Through Joy.
I'm not sure why I mentioned the change in the lyrics. I remember the old lyrics because when I was in Primary they used to draw pictures to remind very young children (too young to read) of the lyrics, and one of these was a strong man flexing his biceps with a big grin on his face -- "joy our strength shall be." (It was shall, not will as I said in the comment.)
This was the version in the orange Sing with Me book, published in 1969. It was replaced in 1989 by a volume with the much more catchy name The Children's Songbook of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which I think is still being used today.
Again, I'm not sure why I focused on this in the comment, jumping straight from a simple reference to the hymn to a history lesson about its pre-1989 lyrics.
Why am I posting about this again now? Because this morning I picked up my Bible, from which I hadn't read since last Saturday, when I had read 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and the first six chapters of Nehemiah. So today I started with Nehemiah 7. In the next chapter, I found this:
Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our LORD: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength (Neh. 8:10).
Nowhere else in the Bible or Mormon scripture is it said that joy is strength. It's just this one obscure verse in Nehemiah.
