Come, We That Love the Lord is a short hymn by Isaac Watts. I rarely hear it sung in LDS services, but it’s lovely and I wish we would sing it more often.

The first time I remember hearing it was about six years ago. I was a brand new volunteer LDS chaplain at San Quentin Prison. It was my first week flying solo. We held services on Sunday evenings. Since the prison was an environment where the inmates had very little autonomy, I made it a point to give them as much freedom as possible at church. That included letting them pick the hymns.

We had CDs with the hymns on them, so we never lacked accompaniment. I asked someone to pick the opening hymn, and he said he wanted to sing Come, We That Love the Lord. I wasn’t familiar with it, but I handed out hymnals, queued up the CD, hit play, and started conducting the music.

I was immediately touched by the lyrics. “Come, we that love the Lord, and let our joys be known.” Here were people serving life sentences in prison, and they were singing about their love for the Lord and their joys.

Over the course of the year that I served as their chaplain, I got to know the men I ministered to. They truly did love the Lord. They had repented of their sins, which were grievous, and they had received forgiveness. This forgiveness gave them joy and peace even in a place that is rarely joyous or peaceful.

Just as they gathered in a dusty chapel library because of their love for the Lord, we, too, can gather with our fellow saints and share our love and joy. Jesus reminds us that wherever two or three are gathered in His name, He is in the midst of us.