Abide With Me
The first classic hymn in this series! "Abide With Me" was written by the very sick Henry F. Lyte.
Welcome to Friday Classic Hymns! Every Friday I'm going to send out a hymn with a bit of background for the hymn and a bit of a commentary on the words, and then a little performance of the hymn. It started because somebody the other day said I don't do enough of the old classics—and I thought, well, that's probably true. Took me a while to get there, to be honest, but I like to do a mix of old and new. I've got a few hymns that I love to do, but there's such a wealth of great hymns out there that I've never actually really learnt. So it's going to be a bit of a project for me as well to learn all these classic hymns and then to share them with you on a Friday.
If you're on the WhatsApp groups that I send out devotions to, you'll get the link every Friday. Otherwise, subscribe to the channel and you'll get a notification if you hit that little bell every time the video comes out.
I'm using a book that was a gift to me from Reverend Francis Adai. I hope I've pronounced that correctly—he is from the Methodist Church in Ghana. I remember when I was minister at Imseni, he was here for a conference and we had a conversation. He came back around a few days later before he left and he gave me this book: 60 Hymn Stories Revised and Enlarged by the Very Reverend T.K. Anderson.
I hope that these short Friday videos will be a blessing to you, and I want to start with a classic hymn called "Abide With Me".
The Story Behind "Abide With Me"
The song was written by Henry F. Lyte, who was a Scottish minister born in the 1790s. He had a lot of issues with his health, but he was a hard worker and he is thought to have coined the phrase "It's better to wear out than to rust out". Because his health was such a problem, it seems that he often wasn't at his church, and this caused a lot of problems. Members would leave the church, and this really upset him, as you can imagine.
In 1847, he wrote this hymn, and it seems as if he wrote it when looking at the words of Luke 24, where Jesus meets the two men on the road to Emmaus and then they say to Him, "Abide with us, stay with us". This inspired this hymn.
He died a short time after writing this. Obviously his health was not in a good place, and that gives these words special meaning, as we shall see. On his gravestone are written two of the lines from this hymn: Heaven's morning breaks and earth's vain shadows flee; In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
What Do the Lyrics of "Abide With Me" Mean?
Now, these are very meaningful words, and they do speak to us in times of death and struggle. They really do.
Verse 1: "Abide with me! fast falls the eventide"
If you look at the first verse, he says, The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide! And, When other helpers fail and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me. Come and stay with me, Lord, and be with me. This is a beautiful prayer to pray in difficult times. He was close to death, remember, so this was meaningful.
Verse 2: "Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day"
Here, Henry talks about this feeling of being close to death: Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day; Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away; Change and decay in all around I see; O Thou who changest not, abide with me. What words! Even though I'm dying, Lord, You don't change. Even though everything else is decaying, You don't change. And so abide with me.
Verse 3: "Come not in terrors, as the King of kings"
Verse 3 is beautiful: Come not in terrors, as the King of kings; But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings: Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea; Come, Friend of sinners, thus abide with me. Beautiful words about how God is with us.
Verse 4: "I need Thy presence every passing hour"
I need Thy presence every passing hour: What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power? Every part of our lives, doesn't matter if we're near the beginning or near the end—He's with us. Through cloud and sunshine, oh, abide with me.
Verse 5: "I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless"
He goes on to talk about how he doesn't fear any foes with God at hand to bless him. Ills and tears, sickness and tears, don't have any way to bitterness to them. Where is death's sting? where, grave, thy victory? Those words come out of 1 Corinthians 15. He says, I triumph still, if Thou abide with me. Amazing words to write close to death.
And then, of course, the last verse (which is sometimes sung as verse 6): Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes; Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies. And in these two lines which were written on his gravestone: Heaven's morning breaks and earth's vain shadows flee—think of that crossover from death to life—In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
Conclusion
Amazing, amazing words. So if you are close to death today, maybe these words will have special meaning to you. But you know what? All of us are dying. All of us are close to death. James says that our lives are just like a vapour. We're a mist—here today, gone tomorrow. And so these words can be meaningful for anybody in any walk of life as we consider life's frailty, but the fact that if God abides with us, stays with us, we have hope.
I hope you'll sing it with me.
References
60 Hymn Stories Revised and Enlarged by the Very Reverend T.K. Anderson
Luke 24 - The road to Emmaus
1 Corinthians 15 - Death's sting and the grave's victory
James 4:14 - Life as a vapour
