Gratitude Lyrics

On Sunday during our interactive service, we had fun with writing new lyrics to old songs.  It's a great exercise for any age, and I mention it, because it doesn't require much prep time or materials.  The small children enjoyed it, as did the older members.  A bonus:  the small children got to write new lyrics to their favorite song by Fallout Boy, and they thought this church service was the coolest thing ever.

We were off lectionary, so we weren't writing lyrics to Christ the King Sunday themes.  We decided to stick with gratitude.  We read the story about the 10 healed lepers, and only one came back to thank Jesus.  Then we broke into three groups of 3-4 members and got to work rewriting songs with a gratitude theme.

We chose the Fallout Boy song, "This Little Light of Mine," and "Jesus Loves Me."  My team had "This Little Light of Mine."  Our assignment was to write one verse, but that didn't take us long, as our lyric repeated:  "Say thank you every day / in each and every way"--repeat 3 times and end with "Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God."  So, we wrote another verse:

In our house and in our school,
Say thank you every day.
At work and in our play,
Say thank you every day.
With family and with friends,
Say thank you every day.
Thank you God, thank you God, thank you God.

The team working on "Jesus Loves Me" didn't get very far, so we all wrote a lyric together.

Thank you God who's full of grace
Who holds us in a warm embrace.
With a smile on our face
We worship God in this place.

We had some sort of thank you refrain.

The Fallout Boy song I can't tell you much about, except that the team pulled up the song on their phone and sang along.  Our pastor recorded each performance, and we had a brief discussion about copyright and performances, along with a daydream about the band hearing about our cover of their song and showing up for a surprise performance.

After church, in the butterfly garden, the mother of the two boys searched for the one Fallout Boy song that I know, from spin class, where I find all modern music.  We (the mom, the two boys, and me) jammed out to "Centuries," and the lyrics we remembered seem somewhat appropriate for church:  "Some legends are told / Some turn to dust or to gold / But you will remember me / Remember me for centuries."  The two small boys seemed impressed that I knew the lyrics.  The older women arriving for the traditional 11:00 service smiled at us.

It was a good Sunday.