After practically twenty years, the reminiscence continues to be vivid: standing in the lounge with the cellphone to my ear, listening as my buddy and pastor, Rick, described to me by sobs how one of many younger, vibrant {couples} in our church had simply been in a horrible automobile accident. The husband had survived. However the spouse had not. And neither had their unborn son — their first little one, whose start that they had been anticipating with a lot pleasure.

I stood surprised, attempting to course of this new actuality. I may see her laughing with a bunch of individuals after church the earlier Sunday. Now, she was all of the sudden gone — taken, alongside together with her little one, in a violent occasion that unfolded in a number of seconds. Rick requested me, the chief of the worship ministry, to start considering and praying over doable music for the funeral that will possible be held the following week.

If my reminiscence is correct, the primary tune that got here to thoughts, virtually instantly, was one in all my favourite hymns: “Be Nonetheless, My Soul.”

Track for Deepest Sorrow

I’ve beloved this hymn since my late teenagers. When sung to a phenomenal association of the tune “Finlandia,” it has, to my ear, good prosody — that’s the time period musicians use to explain how “all parts [of a song] work collectively to help the central message of the tune.” And the central message of “Be Nonetheless, My Soul” is the resurrection hope Jesus offers us within the face of the devastating dying of a beloved one.

The highly effective lyrics come from the pen of a German lady named Katharina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel and commenced showing in German hymnals in 1752. Little is thought about Katharina. Some imagine she could have been a “Stiftsfraulein,” a member of a feminine Lutheran “stift” (convent) within the city of Köthen (100 miles southwest of Berlin), and that she had been considerably influenced by a pietistic Christian renewal motion.

No document survives of the precise occasion(s) that impressed her to compose this deeply shifting hymn. However such specifics aren’t mandatory since all of us expertise the form of devastating losses she writes about. And after they come, we regularly discover ourselves enduring an inner hurricane of disorienting grief, in determined want of the peaceable shelter of hope. And the reward Katharina has bequeathed to us — within the 4 verses most English hymnals include (she wrote six) — is that this profound poetic reminder of the one shelter for our sorrowful, storm-tossed souls: the faithfulness of God.

‘The Lord Is on Thy Facet’

She begins in verse one by reminding us of the unshakable basis on which we stand by religion:

Be nonetheless, my soul: the Lord is on thy aspect.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or ache.
Go away to thy God to order and supply;
In ev’ry change, He devoted will stay.
Be nonetheless, my soul: thy greatest, thy heav’nly buddy
Via thorny methods results in a joyful finish.

The primary line is a close to quote of Psalm 118:6: “The Lord is on my aspect; I cannot concern.” However the rationale for why we’ve any proper to make this in any other case audacious declare is gloriously said in Romans 8:31–32:

What then let’s assume to those issues? If God is for us, who could be towards us? He who didn’t spare his personal Son however gave him up for us all, how will he not additionally with him graciously give us all issues?

Within the swirl of grief, we could surprise, “All issues? Then why did God not spare my beloved one from dying and me from such anguish of separation?” To which the Holy Spirit, by the good apostle, graciously, hopefully, and gently replies,

No, in all this stuff we’re greater than conquerors by him who beloved us. For I’m certain that neither dying nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor issues current nor issues to come back, nor powers, nor peak nor depth, nor the rest in all creation, will have the ability to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37–39)

Soul, be at peace: your devoted Lord is in your aspect. And he’ll lead you thru this vale of deep darkness to the eternally Son-lit, joyful land of eternal love (Psalm 23:4, Revelation 21:23).

‘All Now Mysterious Shall Be Vivid at Final’

In verse two, Katharina reminds us of the good promise bought for us when the Father didn’t spare his personal Son for us: freedom from the curse of dwelling with the information of excellent and evil — the information we insisted on having, whereas missing the capacities to understand or mange it.

Be nonetheless, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To information the long run, as He has the previous.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be vibrant ultimately.
Be nonetheless, my soul: the waves and winds nonetheless know
His voice who dominated them whereas He dwelt beneath.

Now, God’s functions in permitting evil to wreak such grievous havoc are largely shrouded in thriller, and so can seem mindless. But it surely won’t all the time be so. For Jesus got here to undo the entire results of curse. First, he got here into the world to undo the curse of dying (Genesis 3:19). After which, after we lastly expertise life free from remaining sin and past the specter of dying, we will be given information extra great than what we sought from the Edenic fruit: we will know totally, at the same time as we’ve been totally identified (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Soul, be at peace: your devoted Lord will quickly make all you now discover so mysterious vibrant ultimately.

‘Jesus Can Repay All He Takes Away’

In verse three, when the sword of grief has pierced our hearts on the deaths of our dearest ones, Katharina applies the balm of gospel promise to our throbbing wound.

Be nonetheless, my soul: when dearest associates depart,
And all is darkened within the vale of tears,
Then shalt thou higher know His love, His coronary heart,
Who comes to assuage thy sorrow and thy fears.
Be nonetheless, my soul: thy Jesus can repay
From His personal fullness all He takes away.

That final line echoes the good faith-filled, worshipful declaration Job made upon the information of the deaths of his pricey kids: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the title of the Lord” (Job 1:21). However Katharina’s phrases declare the biblical promise of a higher restoration than Job skilled on earth. For God has promised that even the severest losses will sometime appear to be “gentle momentary affliction” in comparison with the “everlasting weight of glory” they produce (2 Corinthians 4:17).

“Your devoted Lord won’t ever depart and can repay from his personal fullness way over all he takes away.”

However this verse additionally describes a Christian’s paradoxical expertise within the very anguish of bereavement. For many who, whereas grieving, place their belief of their greatest and heav’nly buddy obtain a foretaste of the riches of Jesus’s fullness as they arrive to “higher know His love, His coronary heart.” They usually expertise new dimensions of the truth of what Jesus meant when he stated, “I’ll by no means go away you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5), and “I’m with you all the time, to the top of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

Soul, be at peace: your devoted Lord won’t ever depart and can repay from his personal fullness way more than all he takes away.

‘We Shall Be Eternally with the Lord’

One week after that tragic automobile accident, we gathered within the sanctuary to recollect the lives and grieve the deaths of that younger spouse, daughter, sister, buddy, and expectant mom, and the newborn boy she and her devastated husband had regarded ahead to bringing into the world. However we didn’t grieve as these “who don’t have any hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

My clearest reminiscence of the funeral was being so deeply moved and comforted by the way in which I heard my brothers and sisters sing “Be Nonetheless, My Soul,” particularly the final verse:

Be nonetheless, my soul: the hour is hast’ning on
When we will be endlessly with the Lord.
When disappointment, grief, and concern are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be nonetheless, my soul: when change and tears are previous
All protected and blessèd we will meet ultimately.

“There’s coming a day when ‘we’ll all the time be with the Lord.’”

Right here is each Christian’s “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13), the explanation Jesus is for us “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). Katharina’s phrases helped us encourage each other within the hope that there’s coming a day when “we’ll all the time be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17–18). They helped us collectively preach to our souls,

Soul, be at peace: your devoted Lord will quickly collect us all collectively once more, protected and blessed, in his presence — the place his full pleasure can be our full pleasure, and the place all that provides him pleasure can be all that provides us pleasure endlessly (Psalm 16:11).

Then, having executed our greatest to nonetheless our souls by religion in God’s faithfulness, we escorted the earthly stays of our sister and child brother to the cemetery, the place we sowed their perishable, weak, and pure our bodies into the bottom within the hope that Jesus will increase them with imperishable, highly effective, non secular our bodies (1 Corinthians 15:42–44). And upon the grave’s marker, the loving husband and father, whose loss had been incalculable, but who in religion believed Christ had higher acquire for the three of them, had this textual content inscribed:

As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;
     after I awake, I shall be happy along with your likeness. (Psalm 17:15)