Take My Hand: a Moment of Serendipity

I’m off work on Fridays so Friday morning is my alone time to do our laundry and clean our house. While I do that I like to listen to CDs of music from years ago. This morning my choice was Neil Diamond. As I listened to his love songs, with my work done, I explored some of the old German books from the collection I inherited from my father after his death in 2014. The book pictured above has the title “So nimm denn meine hande!”
We can see inside that it belonged to my grandfather, John Ludwig Margheim.

The book was published in 1910 when my Grandpa was 10 years old. It’s nice that the autograph also tells me that Grandpa lived at 414 E. 4th St, Hoisington, KS at that time.
I sat down at my computer this morning to look up on Google the translation of the book title. As I was doing so, I was singing along to Neil Diamond as he sang one of my favorite songs “Cant Help Falling in Love with You”. I particularly like the closing of the song, when he says “Take my hand, take my whole life too, for I can’t help falling in love with you.”
As I was singing that final phrase with Neil Diamond, the results of my Google search came up and I clicked to translate. Almost to my unbelief, what I found was “So Take my Hands”. Here are the words to the song, from which the book title comes:
Julie Hausmann, 1862; English text
So take my hands
And lead me
Until my blessed end
And forever!
I do not like walking alone,
Not a step;
Where you will go and stand,
Take me there.
2. In your mercy envelope
My weak heart
And make it completely quiet
In joy and pain.
Let them rest at your feet
Your poor child;
He wants to close his eyes
And believe blindly.
3. If I do not feel the same
From your power,
You bring me to the goal,
Also through the night.
So take my hands
And lead me
Until my blessed end
And forever!
I’m very fortunate to have possession of Grandpa’s book and especially happy that I was prompted to review it this morning. I won’t listen to Neil Diamond again without making the connection to my grandfather John Ludwig Margheim (1900-1978) and his little church book. Serendipity at its best!