Text: Lina Sandell (1832-1903) Tune: German folk.
1. Children of the heavenly Father
Safely in his bosom gather;
Nestling bird nor star in heaven
Such a refuge e’er was given.
2. God his own doth tend and nourish;
In his holy courts they flourish,
From all evil things he spares them,
In his mighty arms he bears them.
3. Neither life nor death shall ever
From the Lord his children sever;
Unto them his grace he showeth
And their sorrows all he knoweth.
4. Praise the Lord in joyful numbers;
Your Protector never slumbers.
At the will of your Defender
Every foeman must surrender.
5. Though he giveth or he taketh,
God his children ne’er forsaketh
His the loving purpose solely
To preserve them pure and holy.
Tr. Ernest Olson;
REFLECTION
In the lesson for next Sunday, Jesus warns his hearers not to hurt a little child. The consequences are dire—eternal flames. We should do everything to keep from hurting a child, even maiming ourselves to keep from doing so, Jesus says. Hurting the faith of a little one is just about the worst thing one can do.
Putting that together with the previous conversation in which Jesus suggests that we become as little children in our faith makes the number of children whom we must treat with ultimate care, a great number.
We have a Heavenly Father who cares for us as his beloved children and makes us safe. Our hymn today, one of the favorites of all time, makes that clear and rejoices in the safety God provides.
Lina Sandell, (1832-1903) a precocious Swedish pastor’s daughter, wrote this
classic hymn, the most popular in Sweden today, when she was between 17-19.
Legend has it that she was sitting in the large tree in front of the parsonage as
she wrote it, looking at the birds of the air and the stars above.
The poem is drenched with scriptural references. She had learned her Bible well. We
hear echoes of Romans 14:8 in stanza 3, “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”
In Stanza 4, Psalm 121:3--“He who keeps you will never slumber.” In stanza 5, Job
1:21, “The Lord gave and the Lord takes away, Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
We might wonder what she, a teen-ager, had to worry about. Much, it turns out. Life in her time, was dangerous. The Sandell family, living in the small village of Fröderyd, in the middle of the woods in Småland, Sweden, had to depend on what it could raise on its farm and the living her father got. Food could be scarce and one of their children died very young. The rocky soil made farming difficult. Life was not easy. Sometimes all they had were the promises of God.
At the time she wrote this hymn, many of her father’s parishioners were fleeing the
hard life in Sweden for America. Life was not easy there either, but the pioneers
brought Sandell’s songs with them and sang them for comfort in the primitive
houses they first built on the farms where they settled.
When she was dying in 1903, thousands of Swedish Americans sent letters to her
thanking her for giving them God’s promises to sing as they met the difficulties of
their day. They are still true. Rest in them.
HYMN INFO
There are many performances of "Children of the Heavenly Father" on Youtube in
every possible style. My favorite is this one by Carola, a Swedish singer
who with organist Iver Kleive of Norway prepared a CD of Sandell’s songs for the
100th anniversary of Sandell’s death in 2003. Kleive is one of Norway’s greatest keyboard artists, he does everything from Rock to Reger.
LINKS
Iver Kleive/Carola
Göran Fristorp, a real Swedish troubadour, came to Luther seminary in 1992 to sing Sandell,
too.
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