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When I accepted the call to be pastor and teacher at the First Reformed Church of Athens, New York in 2001, the consistory and I agreed that at the end of seven years I would be granted a sabbatical. Somewhat to our surprise, the time actually arrived at the end of July 2008 when I would conduct worship before a hiatus of fifteen weeks. For that service, I wanted to use Carl P. Daw's text "Have we any gift worth giving?", which in Sing! a New Creation is paired with Alfred V. Fedak's Costly Gifts. It is a fine tune for the text, but not especially conducive to guitar accompaniment and solo voice. While preparing the liturgy, this tune arrived in my mind's ear. I used it for that service, which started my sabbatical.
The Classis of Columbia-Greene, of which I am a member and to which I am amenable assigned me to supervise the congregation at the Linlithgo Reformed Church in Livingston, New York while they are without a pastor. Consequently, I presided at a memorial service celebrating the life of a colleague's husband, in which I used this piece. I had to chuckle when one of the members of the Linlithgo consistory remarked to me afterwards "You never told us you could SING!" It just never came up.