It was 1 of 3 theme songs when FDR and Churchill finally met.
“O God, Our Help in Ages Past” is often sung at Community Thanksgiving Services. I’ve watched people enjoying it, almost nostalgically, with our head tilted heads and eyebrows raised wistfully.
It’s a good reminder of the power and the promise of God’s love, power and profound substance. The melody alone is moving and inspiring.
Verses like the concluding one in our current hymnal, “O God, our help in ages past/our hope for years to come/be thou our guide while life shall last/and our eternal home” are comforting. And rightly so.
But what’s omitted in our sanitized sanctity are verses like these three:
Thy Word commands our flesh to dust,
“Return, ye sons of men:”
All nations rose from earth at first,
And turn to earth again.
The busy tribes of flesh and blood,
With all their lives and cares,
Are carried downwards by the flood,
And lost in following years.
Like flowery fields the nations stand
Pleased with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the mower’s hand
Lie withering ere ‘tis night.
Those three forgotten verses give the rest of the hymn a clearly realistic, if painfully sobering, context. As a favorite teacher of mine liked to say, “God’s Yes is meaningless without God’s No. Eternal Life if equally meaningless without facing its alternative.”
Today, let’s remember that our Help and our Hope are real. And let’s be grateful.
And I know I’ll have this tune floating through my day, how about you?
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