Skip to content

Good Friday

“Were You There?”

DEVOTION – GOOD FRIDAY

Lent and Holy Week have some very powerful and moving hymns that cause us to pause and contemplate our Savior’s passion. A few hymns that come to mind are, “Go to Dark Gethsemane,” “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted,” “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” and one that captured my imagination as a child, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.”
A hymn for Good Friday that appears in some newer Lutheran hymnals is “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” (Christian Worship #119 / Lutheran Service Book #456) A quick search online reveals that this hymn was sung by slaves on plantations in the pre-Civil War era.
The hymn asks us if we “were there” when Jesus was crucified, when He was nailed to the tree, when they laid Him in the tomb, and when God raised Him from the tomb. Each verse echoes with the refrain, “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”Read More »“Were You There?”