A Light is Gleaming

A Light is Gleaming (‘When light comes pouring into the darkest place’). Linnea Good* (1962– ).  Written first for The Whole People of God church school curriculum (1992), Linnea Good’s ‘A Light Is Gleaming’ appeared subsequently in Voices United (VU, 1996) the denomination hymnal of the United Church of Canada.  The song begins with a refrain inviting the singers to come and share in the light and love of God. Notable in its text construction, the line ‘living in the light’, sung twice in the refrain, is grammatically unconnected from the lyrics which precede it. This is a feature more common in songs than in hymns and remains a persistent idée fixe.  A line in the first stanza, ‘When...