I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the old hymns.
Today’s song is Eternal Father, Strong to Save from around 1860 by William Whiting, an English poet from Winchester. It’s based on Psalm 107.
It’s a well-known hymn, but I never heard it in church. It’s specifically about the sea. I can see why it might have been more relevant back in the 19th Century. Still, nowadays people travel in different ways, and we pray for safety on their journeys. Even in my lifetime, I can remember dreadful sea-related disasters, even close to Ireland. And my Father would have travelled back and forward to the US back in the 1950s on the same route that the Titanic took.
I remember being in Crosshaven, County Cork in March 1968. I was only six, and someone mentioned an air crash that had just occurred. Later that day, I was at Cork airport to see my aunt off on her flight to London, and I learned that the crashed Aer Lingus Viscount had left earlier that day from Cork airport. Some people from our immediate area had been on the flight. My aunt could very easily have been on it. So, it still makes sense to pray for those who travel. Do our prayers make any difference? I never know if a specific prayer does. But if God encourages us to pray, surely there will be times when he will respond to our prayers in the way that we hope. And prayer always makes some difference because we are expressing our love and trust in God.
I think of the New Testament. At times, God prevented imprisonment and enabled people to escape. Other times people died. Stephen and James are key examples. It’s often said that God decides exactly how long we’ll spend in this world and even how we’ll emerge from the world. We won’t all be brought instantly to heaven without dying like Elijah and Enoch. But disasters are so sad. Any kind of death is sad, but I think that disasters hit us particularly hard, and it’s natural to look to God and hope and pray that they don’t happen.
But I like to broaden out the theme of the hymn in my own mind. Not everyone is in peril on the sea, but people are in peril all over the world. It’s been such a joy for me to see the end of the troubles in Northern Ireland. I grew up constantly hearing of tragic murders. And it’s sad to see the same thing going on throughout the world. We don’t sing today’s hymn in church. In fact, we don’t sing any of the old hymns in the church that I currently attend. But I listen to them at home, and maybe I should sing along to them and make them part of my daily prayer.
The writer wrote it to comfort a student who was terrified of ocean travel, drawing on his own experience of being rescued. It’s often used as a broader prayer for protection in dangerous vocations. But whoever we are, and whatever we’re facing, the hymn can be a comfort to us. Ultimately God controls everything. So, who is in a better position to help and save us. And even when he allows bad things to happen to those He loves, we can be confident that He has our ultimate good in mind. A child might be a little bewildered when a doctor sticks a needle into his arm, but later he learns that it was done to keep the child safe from illness, such as mumps or measles. We don’t always understand what God is doing, but we can be confident that He is for us:
Romans 8:31-31
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
Here are some other versions of today’s hymn:
Hibernia Gospel 