Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided

Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided. Timothy Dudley-Smith* (1926-2024). This text has been acclaimed as one of the 20th century’s finest hymns: among its author’s output it is second only to ‘Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord’* in popularity. It was written in 1967, and first published in Youth Praise 2. Like ‘Here within this house of prayer’* it is a ‘special occasion’ hymn which has proved, as intended, to be much more widely useful. Its immediate origin was the centenary of CSSM, the Children’s Special Service Mission founded in 1867 whose functions were taken under the wing of the (now better-known) Scripture Union some years ago. The SU had played a...