Something to listen to while you read…sheet music available at Sheet Music Plus.

English churches were using the tune from the old Welsh lullaby All Through the Night (Ar Hyd y Nos) to sing with Reginald Huber’s (1783-1826) God, Who Made Heaven and Earth. But one British organist and composer, Francis Jackson (b. 1917), had different ideas for God, Who Made Heaven and Earth. He wanted to replace the tune so in 1957 he wrote a new one called East Acklam.

East Acklam never truly caught on but British hymnologist John Wilson (1905-1992) saw value in Jackson’s new tune. He asked Methodist pastor and hymn writer Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000) to write a new text to go with East Acklam. Green penned a hymn of thanksgiving and stewardship, For the Fruit of All Creation, which was first published August 1970 in the British Methodist Recorder. Although Green’s text was a hit, East Acklam still didn’t catch on. So today most hymnals come full circle and pair Green’s For the Fruit of All Creation with the original old Welsh lullaby All Through the Night (Ar Hyd y Nos) that started it all.

(And as if Ar Hyd y Nos didn’t have enough texts already, American hymnist Jaroslav Vajda (1919-2008) wrote a third, popular hymn text for the tune, Go, My Children, with My Blessing, whose comforting lyrics give a small nod to the tune’s roots as a lullaby.)

My piano arrangement of Ar Hyd y Nos is one of the first I ever wrote. But even though this arrangement is six years old – and I’d write it much differently now – For the Fruit of All Creation’s message of stewardship and social justice is just as (and unfortunately maybe even more so) relevant today. Hope you find the music inspiring.

In the just reward of labor,
God’s will is done.
In the help we give our neighbor,
God’s will is done.
In our world-wide task of caring
for the hungry and despairing,
in the harvests we are sharing,
God’s will is done.