Their Stolen Children Have Been Found: A hymn by Rev. Kurt E. Reinhardt

CANADA – Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC)’s Rev. Kurt E. Reinhardt, hymn writer and pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kurtzville, Ontario, recently shared his reflections on the discovery of 215 Indigenous children buried beside the former Residential School in Kamloops, BC.

“The song came to me as I was listening to the story on the CBC while driving north to our cottage with my youngest daughter in the backseat of the car,” Pastor Reinhardt shared. “Having my own young child with me as I heard about the children’s unmarked graves caused me to feel the plight of their poor parents and people all the more deeply.”

As they drove along, Pastor Reinhardt asked his daughter to write down the words as they came to him. He dedicates the following hymn to the 215 Indigenous children buried beside the former Residential School in Kamloops, BC.

Their Stolen Children Have Been Found

Written by Kurt E. Reinhardt

Their stolen children have been found,
We hid them in unhallowed ground.
Their cries rise up to heaven’s skies,
Against the hatred and the lies,
That tore them from their loving arms,
Exposing them to untold harms.

Refrain:
For the lost children weep,
Who in the ground now sleep,
That we their lesson reap,
Their mem’ry sacred keep.

Their hearts with grief are overcome.
This horror has struck us all dumb.
We can but hang our heads in shame,
At what was done in Heaven’s name.
The God of love most surely wept,
When His compassion in us slept.

What we stole we cannot repay.
We must confess it all and say,
That in the true North strong and free,
We will all strive from sea to sea,
To not forget our nation’s wrong,
Lest we its evils still prolong.

———————

Rev. Kurt E. Reinhardt is pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church (Kurtzville, ON). He recently released a volume of poetry entitled: My Light and My Salvation. One of those poems—“Baptismal Waters Cover Me”—was also included as Hymn 616 in the Lutheran Service Book.

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