Daily Devotion 5th November 2018

Charles Edward Oakley, the author, was an Anglican priest who ended up as rector of St Paul’s Covent Garden in London.  He died in 1865 and this hymn was published five years after his death.  It wasn’t possible to include a revised version of the hymn (the original words were felt to have colonialist allusions) in Rejoice and Sing and also pair it with the tune Little Cornard (to which is it is, almost always, sung).  Interestingly in the years since Rejoice and Sing was published it has, in revised version, entered various editions of Hymns Ancient and Modern and is also found in Singing the Faith .  It isn’t included in Church Hymnary 4 used, primarily, in Scotland.                   

A rather splendid rendition of the hymn can be heard here.
 

Do not fear, for I am with you;
   I will bring your offspring from the east,
   and from the west I will gather you;
I will say to the north, ‘Give them up’,
   and to the south, ‘Do not withhold;
bring my sons from far away
   and my daughters from the end of the earth—

It seems to me that the Reading is doing something connected but different. The writer’s moment is yet to come, the aspect is promise. He speaks of what will be in future tense. In its way, though, the Reading is more specific. It’s action more concrete. Real justice for real sons and daughters, real flesh and blood.

Peter Rollins wrote once that the great stumbling block of Christianity – or one of them – was its insistence on a particular instance over speculative general possibility: the claim on our lives of this moment, this saviour, this place and this hope.

It is easy to believe in the possibility of a saviour, of a possible hope, in another moment. But the claim that divinity inhabits a particular life, and that the divine is active in a particular moment makes a response unavoidable. I must judge if it is true and how it is true. I cannot hide in speculation about possibility or metaphysics. A response of heart and hand – and head – is called out from me.