I have often wondered whether neo-Calvinists have a difficult time singing hymns that put singers in the passive position of waiting for the triumph over sin and death in the world to come. I mean, constantly looking for signs of Christ’s victory in the affairs of this world has to be depressing, unless you avoid the news or are remarkably naive. The analogy might be something like a Chicago Cubs fan who every season and off-season believes the franchise is proving itself the best in Major League Baseball.

One hymn I’ve had in mind that would not make a neo-Calvinist editorial cut is #444 (original Trinity Hymnal), “Father I Know that All My Life” (exclusive psalmodists, avert your eyes):

Father, I know that all my life
Is portioned out for me;
The changes that are sure to come,
I do not fear to see:
I ask thee for a present mind,
Intent on pleasing thee.

I would not have the restless will
That hurries to and fro,
Seeking for some great thing to do,
Or secret thing to know;
I would be treated as a child,
And guided where I go.

I ask thee for the daily strength,
To none that ask denied,
A mind to blend with outward life,
While keeping at thy side,
Content to fill a little space,
If thou be glorified.

In service which thy will appoints
There are no bonds for me;
My secret heart is taught the truth
That makes thy children free;
A life of self-renouncing love
Is one of liberty.

The stanza about not having a restless will must especially give those who would go out and transform the world pause.

But then it turns out that sometimes a little quiet time this side of the new heavens and new earth is just what the physician of souls ordered. Jim Bratt, at The12, anyway, gives reasons (in connection with Harold Camping’s death) for thinking otherworldly thoughts:

Now the coincidence. That same day I read the gloomiest forecast I’ve seen to date about global warming. (“Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice? Scientists Consider Extinction,” by Dahr Jamail.) Melting Arctic shelf, disappearing glaciers, warming and acidifying oceans, all the old familiars strains, but then the big one—the likely release of unfathomable amounts of methane from the Arctic permafrost, spiking the mean global temperature by at least 4 degrees C—and ending life on earth as we know it. The sixth mass extinction in planetary history is underway, and our species is part of it. Their food sources and fresh water supplies wiped out, the human race will be reduced to slight remnants huddled around the two poles, trying to keep cool. It all makes Camping’s prediction of seven billion people dying in his end-time disaster sound quite plausible. Who knows, maybe 2011 will turn out to have been the tipping point, the year the books were closed on human folly. Funny, the Christian fundamentalists who tuned into Camping revile the global-warming scenarios spun by eco-radicals, and the eco-radicals, secular to a fault, have not the slightest use, not even ridicule, for the likes of Camping. But they come out at the same place.

So Advent? Christmas? Not on the tip of my singing tongue. Today being the deepest midwinter, the pit of darkness, my mind and my mood go instead to an old Dutch hymn that we used to sing on New Year’s Eve when I was a boy. Right after the congregation’s necrology was read, and after a sermon heavy with the specter of judgment and finality and aspersions upon “the world’s” way of spending the evening in frivolity and laughter. Set against that background, the hymn ain’t bad. Not bad at all. A sense of an ending is there, but so—even more—is God’s “right hand [that] will take us/to our everlasting peace.” For a fidgety boy dying to get out of church those nights, knowing that yet another service faced us the next morning, the lyrics felt solid and honest, and the tune sounded somehow noble and assuring in its steady march up and down the scale.

Here’s the hymn:

1 Hours and days and years and ages
swift as moving shadows flee;
as we scan life’s fleeting pages,
nothing lasting do we see.
On the paths our feet are walking,
footprints all will fade away;
each today as we enjoy it
soon becomes a yesterday.

2 But from sin your mercy drew us,
would not leave our souls alone.
Gracious Lord, you did renew us;
in Christ’s death we are your own.
Through the mercy of your leading,
each short step along our way
now becomes a path to guide us
to the land of endless day.

3 Though swift time keeps marching onward,
it will not decide our end.
You will always be our Father,
loving God, eternal Friend.
When life’s dangers overwhelm us,
you will ever be our stay;
through your Son you are our Father,
always changeless, come what may.

4 Speed along, then, years and ages,
with your gladness and your pain;
when our deepest sorrow rages,
God our Father will remain.
Though all friends on earth forsake us
and our troubles shall increase,
God with his right hand will take us
to our everlasting peace.

What do you know, it’s only a digit removed in the CRC’s Psalter Hymnal from “Father I Know that All My Life”‘s number in the Trinity Hymnal.