This has been a very challenging week for me. I’m glad for the weekend and hope to find time for renewal.
As the week closes the hymn, Abide With Me, comes to mind. In it, the songwriter appeals to our God to stay by his side as evening falls. The hymn was written in the last days of the author’s life and so the hymn has that double meaning … as darkness and death comes.
I needed the comfort of this hymn all week … but now at the close of the week … I long to be reminded that he never leaves us nor forsakes us … and his faithfulness is new every morning!
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
Not a brief glance I beg, a passing word;
But as Thou dwell’st with Thy disciples, Lord,
Familiar, condescending, patient, free.
Come not to sojourn, but abide with me.
I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.
Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of a portion of John 15 goes like this …
“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant.”
How much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Abide with me … fast falls the eventide.
