Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning
For SATB Choir (opt. hand percussion). Bill Pasch has given us a setting of this spiritual that is great fun to sing and incorporates snippets of the melody of Wachet Auf (Wake, O Wake). A perfect beginning to Advent as well as the other times the lesson of the Wise and Foolish Maidens appears in the lectionary. Selected as the offertory anthem, this piece was sung in the December 2017 Bethlehem Prayer Service, simulcast between the Washington National Cathedral and the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, Palestine.
Solo: Wake! Awake! Keep your lamps trimmed!
Dark night will soon be gone.
Keep your lamps trimmed and burnin',
For this work's almost done.
Children don't grow weary,
For this work's almost done.
Darker midnight lies before us,
'fore this work's almost done.
Lo, the morning soon is breaking.
For this work's almost done.