The Ottoman Empire expanded from Anatolia into the Balkans during the 1300s and by 1400 marauding Muslim armies had pierced the boundaries of the once-mighty ByzantineĮmpire. Influenced by many years under Roman rule and subsequently made a part of the Byzantine Empire, Albania could boast a flourishing culture, established trade, and a strong economy by the middle ages this situation would change for the worse after the region was overrun by the Ottoman Turks in 1388.
Although influenced culturally as the result of conquest by Greece, Rome, and ultimately the Visigoths, Huns, and Ostrogoths, large numbers of Albanian peasants nonetheless managed to retain their customs, culture, and language by living in small, remote towns in the mountains where, due to the lack of roads, they were able to resist all efforts at assimilation by conquering cultures. Although known for being sociable, the Illyrians were also known for their bravery in war and aggressively maintained their lands against the many other clans throughout the Balkan region. Many occasions of worship in which Christian servanthood is the theme, thus missions services and services that focus on diaconal work.The Albanian people, descendants of the Illyrians, occupied the mountainous region of the western Balkans, a remote area extending from what is now Slovenia southward into Greece. That parable was his response to the question “Who is my Neighbor?” (Luke 10:25-37). This fine text is based on Jesus' personalized object lesson on servanthood when he washed his disciples' feet (John 13:1-17) and on Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan. It was also published in many other hymn books.
After the hymn was published in their collection Free to Serve: Hymns from Africa (1968), its popularity spread to other Christian communities. It is only when we who are rich learn to have the humility of the slave towards the poor of the world that we shall be able to learn from them they have so much to teach us and share with us.Ĭolvin shared text and tune with the Iona Community in Scotland. I was ashamed of the wasteful affluence of my people but proud of the Gospel that transforms us into servants of one another. Sitting there in the moonlight, I felt it simply had to be about black and white, rich and poor. Colvin explained his writing of the text as follows:
New converts had brought a folk melody to this meeting, which they thought might be appropriate for a text about Christian love. Tom Colvin ( PHH 352), long-term missionary to Africa, wrote this text in 1963 in Chereponi, northern Ghana, while he was attending a lay-training course in agriculture, development, and evangelism.
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