Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is by John Bell, “Though hope desert my heart”. As a contrast to yesterday’s about the joy of a wedding, this is a song of lament when times are troubled. The whole piece is in a minor key.
The words do not hold back from the realities that some people’s lives (or indeed most people’s at some points) are tough. Life is often difficult to handle, and at those times emotional as well as practical support can make all the difference to how someone copes. Without being specific about what causes these troubles – that will vary from one situation to another – the verses run through the kind of feelings that troubles bring. Lack of hope, strangeness, truth (of the inconvenient kind), lack of confidence, weariness, fruitless talk, threatening places, trials, hurt and a sense of being abandoned.
The refrain of verses 1 to 4 is short and to the point: “You have been here before”, ‘you’ being Jesus of course, who had these times in his own life. When his brothers turned against him, when the religious leaders accused him of Sabbath-breaking and worse, when the disciple Judas Iscariot betrayed him for money, when the crowd bayed for his blood, when all but one of his disciples fled from him at the cross. Verse 4 is more explicit that it was on the cross that he “felt all our hurt and more and cried in deep abandonment”.
The last verse looks to the future, still in a minor key and not pretending that life will necessarily get easier, but with more confidence in Jesus being with us: “I will not dread the dark, the fate beyond control, nor fear what reigns in frightening things: you will be there before”.
I think this is a great hymn, and my thanks to John Bell for writing it. My own thoughts on the whole business of laments in psalms and hymns were crystallized by reading Simon Stocks’ Grove Booklet “Using the Psalms as prayers in suffering”. It it (towards the beginning) he mentions that the church fails its people if it only sings songs of rejoicing and joy, because we fail to equip people with songs to get them through the times when things are tough. So for years I have tried to set Psalms of Lament as Christian hymns in order that they may be sung – and this is a great example of such a hymn.
I think the oddness of some of the words only increases its effect. In line 2 it could have been “though sadness fill my soul”, but John’s actual word “though STRANGENESS fill my soul” provokes one to explore how grief can be alien and foreign. In line 3 it could have been “though doubt torment my troubled mind”, but “though TRUTH torment …” forces us to recognize that sometimes it is the truth that hurts (as Raffiki says in the “Lion King” movie), and the reality of situations which torment. Hats off to John for evoking these thoughts. And, of course, his central theme – that what God did not assume he could not save, and so in Christ he entered deeply into human experience – is at the heart of the Gospel.
And, in the best of the “Psalms of Lament” tradition, John’s hymn finishes with a note of “light at the end of the tunnel” – I will continue to trust, even through these dark times.
So … all in all, a great hymn!
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I would have liked to sing the hymn to the John Crothers tune (the first one set in the book) which I do like and did have a go at playing: it has a slight wistfulness about it which goes well with the air of these words. (I know John from Hymn Society conferences, but this is the first of his tunes I have ever really wrestled with.) But I found it quite a difficult tune with its frequent suspensions and accented passing notes in the inner parts, as well as its key signature (I’m ashamed that even after many years, I still find more than three flats or sharps tax my sight-reading of music), and really the simplicity and directness of the words warrant a stark simple tune, which Southwell is.
(The book says “Southwell” was adapted from Psalm 45 in the 16th century. But I find it hard to think how this tune could ever have been set for Psalm 45, which is a wedding psalm and joyful if ever there was one! I suppose it just shows how culture changes!)