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In my frail old age, I have come to rely more and more on the hymns of the church to sustain my faith, and therefore to fund my hope and undergird what is left of my life. There is something teasingly elusive about such singing; we are able to sing what we cannot say. Just now, my exercise of hymnody (with my feeble singing) is in the dialectic of verses in two hymns that together tell the truth of my life.

The first requirement of a good hymn is that it should tell the truth and not gloss over the reality of our life. (Of course, it follows that conservative “praise hymns” and liberal “love ballads” fail this test.) I find such truth-telling in a verse of the hymn, “Strong Song of God, Immortal Love.” It is surprising to me that I cannot find it in any of the “main line” hymnals I have at hand; but I am able to remember it from my younger years of church singing, and so could recover it from older sources.

Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we have not seen Thy face,

By faith, and faith alone embrace, Believing where we cannot prove;

Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood Thou, 

Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours to make them Thine.

Our little systems have their day, they have their day and cease to be;

They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O Lord, art more than they. 

Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell,

That mind and soul according well, May make one music as before.

The hymn sounds the most important accents of faith. Verse one affirms “faith alone” after the manner of Luther. The second verse echoes the Nicene formula, “truly divine, truly human.” And the final verse declares that reverence is more crucial than knowledge, reiterating the old wisdom verdict that right knowledge begins in the fear of the Lord. On all counts the hymn is loaded with faithful affirmation, nearly a summary and glossary of faithfulness.

It is, however, verse 3 that causes me to linger with the hymn. The subject of the verse is “our little systems.” In good poetic fashion, the hymn does not specify the little systems, so that we are free to assign meaning to the phrase as we choose. We might think variously of our economic system of capitalism, our political system of democracy, our theological system of Calvin, Luther, Tillich or Barth. Indeed the phrase can comprehend all of our best configurations of power, knowledge, or faith. It can also refer to our “ego systems,” the ways we constructed and presented ourselves to our world and to ourselves. In every aspect of our life, we are drawn to “our little systems” that variously carry truth, or at least advantage.

The hymn renders a verdict on all such systems, public and personal. They are “little.” They may loom large in our imagination, but amid the rule of the Holy One, they are very little in significance or staying power. More than that, they will, so the hymn avers, “cease to be.” The phrase acknowledges that all of our efforts at meaning or control are quite temporary and penultimate. They cannot and will not be sustained. The thought is ominously sobering. So much of our effort is devoted to maintaining our preferred system. We imagine, always, that the stakes in such maintenance are very high; they matter so much! To the contrary, asserts the hymn, they sooner or later “cease to be.” Maintenance of our preferred systems of power, money, and meaning, political and personal, has an expiration date. And most especially, I suspect, we labor long and hard at the construction and maintenance of a viable, credible self. But even such constructed and maintained selves “cease to be.”

The reason that all of our treasured systems cease to be is that they are, at best, “broken lights,” fractured mirrors, that only partially and imperfectly reflect the wonder of the reality of God. Because they are imperfect reflections, they are transient. After such an acknowledgement, the verse utters the great doxological “thou”: “Thou O Lord.” The one gladly named is the creator of the world, the covenant-maker of Israel, the one who comes fully present in the life of Jesus, the one whom we name, eventually, as Father, Son, and Spirit. This “thou,” the one to whom we sing, is more than all of our constructs, more durable, more reliable, more faithful, more generous, more demanding, more on all counts, than our treasured constructions.

I sing this verse and sometimes settle for humming it. It is a reliable acknowledgement of my true situation. Of course, that has been true all life long, but like most of my contemporaries, I did not, in busier times, pause to affirm it. The verse is an affirmation that I (we) need not be durable, and need not pretend to be. This affirmation is a way, in the fullness of time, to yield one’s life to the durable, generous attentive governance of God. I end my singing of this verse which I take to be a recognition of my marginal significance in the world of God’s wellbeing. It is enough, the lines aver, to have marginal significance, because beyond our singing and amid our singing is the abiding and attentive wonder of God who is “more” in love. I finish the verse fully prepared to fall back into that love. The truth is that our “broken lights” cannot fully and faithfully reflect the wonder of God’s love. The verse allows me (us) to come to terms with our true place in the mercy of God, a good place in which to live all of our days!

The other element of this hymnic dialectic that now occupies me is a better known hymn:

Fight the good fight with all thy might,

Christ is thy strength and Christ thy right.

Lay hold on life, and it shall be

thy joy and crown eternally.

Run the straight race through God’s good grace;

lift up thine eyes, and seek Christ’s face.

Life with its way before us lies;

Christ is the path, and Christ the prize.

Cast care aside; lean on thy guide.

God’s boundless mercy will provide.

Trust, and thy trusting soul shall prove

Christ is its life, and Christ its love.

Faint not nor fear; God’s arms are near.

God changeth not, and thou art dear.

Only believe, and thou shalt see

That Christ is all in all to thee. 

(Glory to God Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013, 846).

Two things are immediately obvious in the hymn. First, it is framed in athletic images: fighting (boxing) and running. The hymnal, Glory to God, adds as an annotated note:

The opening phrase here (based on I Timothy 6:12) is not a military image, but an athletic one, from a Greek verb meaning “struggle” or “grapple” or “wrestle.” The sports context continues in later stanzas reflecting the experience of a runner recalling (Hebrews 12:1-2).

We might also add that the imperative of the epistle:

Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come (I Timothy 4:7-8).

Those who practice a disciplined faith are in competition to perform lives in the most compelling ways.

Second, the hymn is saturated with imperatives. It is as though the congregation, speaking in one voice, offers an invitational imperative to each member of the congregation:

Fight, 

lay hold, 

run, 

cast, 

trust, 

faint not, 

fear not, 

believe.

The imperatives in sum are a summons to mobilize one’s energy for a life deeply rooted in the power of the gospel, and so free from every impediment that may lead to passivity. Taken together, these two images bespeak a practical faith that is filled with energy, with an eye on the good outcomes that arise from such glad obedience.

It is, however, the fourth stanza that occupies my attention. At every moment of our lives–and certainly in old age—our lives provide grounds for fear or for faintness that readily issues in resignation or passivity. This verse powerfully refutes such a temptation. The ground for not being faint or fearful is the ready availability of the God who embraces us in unconditional love. The everlasting arms of the creator uphold and comprehend and assure the entire creation and every creature. More than that, this God does not change. This does not mean that God is immutable. Rather it asserts that God’s fidelity persists in and through every circumstance. And the ground for such confidence is that the “thou,” the one addressed by the creator, is “dear.” The one summoned to fearlessness is cherished by the God of all eternity. This is a practical articulation of “justification by grace” cast in the most intimate imagery of parent and child. This “Thou” is a declared by God to be a “dear daughter” or a “dear son,” the one welcomed home as a prodigal, or the one who remained faithfully at home who inherits all that the father/mother possesses. Either way, first sibling in fidelity or second sibling in waywardness, every child is a beloved child, held dear by the Lord of all eternity. The final lines of the verse affirm that “Christ is all in all,” fully adequate, leaving us to need or desire nothing more than the bodily embrace of the creator God. Nothing more needed; nothing more desired; nothing more required. This verse commands us to look beyond the daily vexations that are sure to beset us, to remain fixed and focused on the ultimacy of God’s love for us.

In daily practice, I find myself moving back and forth between these two hymns, from

Our little systems have their day

to

Thou art dear.

The first of these phrases is an exercise in realism. We finally cannot hold on to our constructs of wellbeing, our achievements or our possessions. These all cease to be; that is, “You cannot take it with you!” Try as we will, we cannot ever take our virtue with us. But the second phrase assures us that none of that matters. None of it matters because the God who “changeth not” has no abiding interest in our possessions or our achievements. Thus the faithful father/mother God welcomes us all into the safe homecoming of a beloved child.

In my daily practice, I find it useful and necessary to keep the two affirmations in lively juxtaposition. Taken by itself, the first phrase, “Our little systems cease to be,” leaves us bereft of staying power. But that statement of bereavement is countered by the second phrase, “Thou art dear.” Alternatively the second phrase, “Thou art dear,” does not exhibit its full force unless it is addressed to those whose “systems cease to be.” The first phrase is an exercise in realism; all of our possessions and achievements count for nothing. The second phrase is an exercise in assurance; beyond our achievements and possessions and the forfeiture of our achievements and possessions there is a character other than ourselves who renders our loss penultimate. I find the final phrase “all in all to thee” wondrous in its grandeur and comprehensiveness. That is all; there is nothing outside this welcome, nothing held back, nothing given conditionally, nothing denied. The fullness and faithfulness of the creator God is an offer of a way that resituates our loss and our state of being bereft.

These hymns have to be sung in community. They cannot be read or thought or remembered or reduced to abstraction. Thus I find the force of both phrases together, “cease to be” and “thou art dear” to be quotidian in its significance for me. It is my hope and invitation that you as well, dear reader, have such poetry available that defies and overrides our conventional practices and commitments. I am reminded yet again of the parental affection of the great South African novelist, Alan Paton, who wrote to his son at confirmation:

Do not pronounce judgment on the Infinite, nor suppose God to be like a bad Prime Minister,

Do not suppose him powerless, or if powerful malignant,

Do not address our mind to criticism of the Creator, do not pretend to know his categories,

Do not take his Universe in your hand, and point out its defects with condescension,

Do not think he is a greater potentate, a manner of President of the United Galaxies,

Do not think that because you know so few human beings, that he is in a comparable though more favorable position.

Do not think it is absurd that he should know every sparrow, or the number of the hairs of your head,

Do not compare him with yourself, nor suppose your human love to be an example to shame him.

He is not greater than Plato or Lincoln, nor superior to Shakespeare and Beethoven, 

He is their God, their powers and their gifts proceed from him,

In infinite darkness they poured with their fingers over the first word of the Book of his Knowledge.

(“Meditation for a Young Boy Confirmed”).

Paton’s lines teem with imperatives no longer to be practiced:

Do not pronounce, suppose, suppose, address, pretend, take in hand, point out, think, think, think, compare, suppose, 

Rather “trust and obey”;

Trust in the ultimacy that thou art dear; 

Obey in the penultimacy that our systems will soon cease to be.

The hymns invite one to truth-telling and hope-telling that defy prosaic logic. That is why we meet to engage in poetic imagination outside the logic of either despair or pride. We sing and if we cannot sing, we hum, that our lives may bask in this other world of truth and hope.