Father, long before creation
Thou hadst chosen us in love
And that love so deep, so moving
Draws us close to Christ above
Still it keeps us, still it keeps us
Firmly fixed in Christ alone

And the world will sing His love
Yes, the world will sign His love
And we'll all join hands
Every woman, every man
And sing His love
We'll sing His love

Though the world may change its fashion
Yet our God is ever the same
His compassion and His covenant
Through all ages will remain

God's own children, God's own children
Must forever praise His name

God so love us, God so loved us
That His only Son He game

God's compassion is my story
It is my boasting all the day

Mercy free and never failing
Moves my will, directs my way



Behind the Song:
"Two Summers ago my wife and I spent a month at a Young Life camp in Arizona, ostensibly to lead music for the high school kids who would come each week. It turned out to be a very different sort of trip for us. The first week was made up of entirely teen moms AND their babies. Over a hundred girls between the ages of 14 and 18 were there to be loved on and served through the Young Lives program. It was an amazing, though incredibly tiring week. My wife spent most of the week babysitting a room full of toddlers and the day they boarded the buses to head home she looked at me and said "Thank God. No more babies." That night we found out we were pregnant.

The next week was a discipleship camp. Instead of the usual mostly non-christian kids they try to bring, these kids were all believers who were there to dig deeper into their walk with the Lord. The speaker spent a couple of days talking about how God is our Father. Needless to say, fatherhood was already greatly on my mind. I couldn’t get over the image of a room full of babies who would grow up with no dads, and I couldn’t believe I was about to become one. (A dad, not a toddler...) What does God as a Father mean to us in these situations?

Throughout that week I was trying to introduce a "new" old hymn to the kids each day, hopefully to inspire them to dig into the depth and beauty of the hymns of generations past, (something I desperately hope we don’t lose in our era of video screens and "worship bands"…) Looking through some old hymnals trying to find something that spoke about God, our Father, I found this. It’s an ancient Chinese text that has floated around with different melodies for centuries. I put this music to it that week to teach to the camp, and I really loved what it said so I kept playing it. When we decided to make this album I thought this would really fit. I rewrote the last verse to serve as more of a chorus, to bring out the celebration of the lyric. These words so seamlessly showed how God created us, loves us and cares for us, and it ends with such a sense of gratitude. I’m really hoping this song will become one that congregations will sing for a while, if nothing else, to keep these lyrics around so somebody else can rewrite the music yet again, and share the wisdom of one generation to yet another." - Caedmon's Call