By Chad Hershberger

Save us, O God of our salvation,
   and gather and rescue us from among the nations,
that we may give thanks to your holy name,
   and glory in your praise.
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
   from everlasting to everlasting.”
Then all the people said ‘Amen!’ and praised the Lord.
—I Chronicles 16: 35-36

If you come to camp this summer and are a returning camper, you will notice we have a new version of Camel Hits. I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve updated our songbook. This time around, we removed some outdated songs and updated other song to be more inclusive. We streamlined the book so it’s easier to find things. And we broke the songs into three categories so that the staff can use them more effectively in their planning.

We also tried to put scripture references with songs. The verses above are quoted in our camp song, “Blessed Be.” I first learned this song when Pastor Andy Weaver and I attended a camp music workshop before the Summer 1994. It was held at Lutherlyn in Western PA by Shawn Smith, who did some concerts at CML in the early 2000s. He taught us some “new to us” camp songs and we brought them back to Central PA. Another one we use frequently is “Humble Thyself.”

These verses are part of a song of thanksgiving that David sang to the Lord.  David raises praise to God who is always with us.  He tells the people to agree with him by saying, “Amen.”  He tells us that we should praise God because God is good and loves us always.  David reminds us to tell the mighty deeds to the Lord and ask God to save us and give us salvation.  Because of all these things, we should give thanks to the holy name of God.

I’m sure our campers don’t think about the context of this when they sing it. But I do hope by seeing the scripture references in the new songbook that they can connect that these are words that are part of God’s Word. Let all the people say, “Amen”!