Forgotten Verses
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?
joescheets 
Yes, it will be floating through my head the rest of the day now. I do remember these verses and I wondered where they went over the years. I have a bad habit of closing my eyes in prayerfulness as I sing the hymns and carols I grew up on. I usually am abruptly brought to consciousness when the words I am singing are in contrast to the voices around me (the ones singing the words in the hymnal). I refuse to change the words to “God Rest Ye Merry [Gentlemen]” or the words changed to not offend feminists. I consider myself a feminist, but don’t expect history to change in my honor!
OK. Off soapbox. Love this one! Because we can’t have the sweet without the bitter. Call it the trajectory of my life or the teachings I learned. I was reminded of that the other day. A younger friend of mine lost his battle with cancer last week. He, and his brother my age, were in Demolay when I was in Jobs’ Daughters growing up. I was a “Jobbie” from age 12 becoming a Majority Member at age 18.
One of the friends I was talking to later had no idea what the two organizations were. As I tried to explain the premise of Jobs’ Daughters, he said it sounded morose to raise young women on the Book of Job. It was then I realized and explained that without that part of my upbringing I might not still be a Christian at this point in my life. Those teachings have gotten me through a great deal, why color the teachings as morose when they are, in context, quite inspiring. Make sense?
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Thank you for this! Especially appreciate your insights.
Sent from my iPad
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