Abide With Me

On the days you feel stretched and thin; more than a bit worn through, like sheets that have reached over-laundered perfection, where do you turn? Sheer thinness is wonderful for bedding – especially in these hot summer months – yet not so much for a heart and soul attempting to cover more lists and chores and “must-dos” than the day has hours for.

What do you do when the last bit of patience has been wrung out from the very core of you? And one more thoughtless co-worker; one more lane-changing-without-a-blinker fool; or even one more “Mama will you …” feels as though it will be the final straw on your nearly broken back.

How do you keep going when the beating heart has just gone out of the one you love; when you’re waiting on razor’s edge for the test results; when the gas gauge is two millimeters above empty; when you’re holding your breath and eating stacks of ramen just to make it to the next paycheck?

This world is rife with worry and circumstances that cause anxiety. Headlines from the twenty-four hour news cycle bring us up to the minute play by plays of all the best of the worst – and when there’s not enough woe – they’ll find a way to invent something new for us to worry about anyway.

Where is the shelter? Where is the breath of peace? Where is the respite from the ongoing onslaught of life? 

As I watch the summer chasing its way to fall with all the speed of a downhill slip-n-slide and ponder the projects yet undone, the school supplies that will need to be purchased, all the decisions that need to be made right this moment, I begin to feel frayed and wild-eyed and on a collision course with calamity.

Lord, I need you now. 

If nothing else, the things we cannot control only affirm for us that we have a great need of a God whose hand marks the time of the stars and who knows the pull of the moon on the tides as surely as He knows our hearts.

There is much of the prayers of the worn and weary in the beautiful hymn, Abide With Me, written by Henry Francis Lyte. Composed just three weeks before his death, the writer expresses both confidence in the nearness of the Lord’s presence and a continued appeal for the sense of it.

If you are find yourself feeling dangerously unraveled or simply weary from your journey, I pray that these words from my three favourite stanzas (and the music below) will be a comfort to you, and an affirmation of God’s unfailing love for those who seek His face.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me. 

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. 

I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

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