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 in-between hymns.
Today’s song is Father I Place Into Your Hands from 1975.
I can’t say that this one is on my favourites musically, but I think the lyrics are wonderful. Like many popular hymns, it began as a children’s hymn.
Just now when I read the lyrics, I noticed the line “Father, I place into your hands, the times that I’ve been through“.
Father, I place into Your hands
The things I cannot do,
Father, I place into Your hands
The times that I've been through.
Father, I place into Your hands
The way that I should go,
For I know I always can trust You.
What exactly does this mean? This might sound strange, but I often look back at my past and pray that God will lead people that I’ve known to Himself. What if they’ve already passed away? It’s not that I believe in purgatory, but God created time. He is outside of time. What’s impossible with humans is possible with God. So God can look at any point in time. If God looks at my April 2026 prayer or indeed, planned my April 2026 prayer, perhaps it might affect what to me is my past. Heresy often starts with speculation, so maybe it’s not a good idea to speculate on such things, but it’s always a good idea to place our needs and desires in God’s hands. If I want to see people in heaven, even if they’ve already passed away, what’s wrong with sharing this with God in the hope that it’ll somehow happen? I see nothing about praying about the past in Scripture, so I wouldn’t build doctrine on it, but I see nothing wrong with paying out your hopes before God, even if they seem quite impossible. Even Jesus prayed that the cup of suffering that He was about to encounter might pass if were possible. Surely He knew that it wasn’t possible, but he simply laid his fears before His Father and put it in His hands.
But of course, I want God to use everything that happened in the past to build me up spiritually. Maybe that’s what the author meant.
I don’t remember where I first heard this hymn. I do remember visiting the Milmead Centre (Guildford Baptist Church) in May 1982, and they sang it there.
Hymns are a good way to begin your quiet time of prayer, and this one is particularly relevant because it’s a prayer in itself. Here are some other versions:
Hibernia Gospel 