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You have selected: Today I Live from the Ron Klusmeier Anthology. Subscribers may download arrangements using the links in the right hand column.

On this page you may view a Sample Image of the words and melody, and listen to an Audio Sample. Lyrics and Author/Composer Comments are below.

Click the arrow above to listen to a sample of this selection while following the melody line below. The audio sample is 4-bar Intro followed by one verse played on piano by Ron Klusmeier.

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Lyrics:

Today I live, but once shall come my death,
one day will still my laughter and my crying,
bring to a halt my heart-beat and my breath:
O give me faith for living and for dying.

How I shall die, or when, I do not know,
nor where, for endless is the world’s horizon;
but save me, God, from thoughts that lay me low,
from morbid fears that freeze my power of reason.

When earthly life shall close, as close it must,
let Jesus be my brother and my merit.
Let me without regret recall the past,
and then, into your hands commit my spirit.

Meanwhile I live and move and I am glad,
enjoy this life and all its interweaving;
each given day, as I take up the thread,
let love suggest my mode, my mood of living.

Author / Composer Comments

• Author Fred Kaan, from his book The Only Earth We Know (Stainer & Bell / Hope Publishing Co., 1999, page 79): “Rather than write a hymn on death and dying (of which there are few – if any – in traditional hymnbooks), I decided to call this text ‘A hymn in the first person singular’. After all, dying is an experience through which every one of us has to pass individually. And so this hymn is a very personal statement which I hope will not, in any way, come across as morbid or self-absorbed. After all: ‘meanwhile I live … enjoy this life’!”