What I Learned at Church

Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul; thy best, thy heavenly, Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul; thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Be still, my soul, though dearest friends depart
And all is darkened in the vale of tears;
Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart,
Who comes to soothe thy sorrows and thy fears.
Be still, my soul; thy Jesus can repay
From His own fulness all He takes away.

Be still, my soul; the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord,
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul; when change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

Text: Katharina von Schlegel, b. 1697;
trans. by Jane Borthwick, 1813-1897

My blog has been pretty religious lately. Not sure why that is - maybe I'm getting old and spirituality is becoming more important to me. But I've been taking comfort in it lately, and knowing that I have a Father in Heaven who loves me no matter what has helped me get through the past few weeks.  We sang this hymn in church today, and it pretty well sums up my feelings. For some reason, the third verse above isn't part of the LDS hymnbook, but when I went searching for the lyrics, it was exactly what I needed to read. I have a "dearest friend" who has pretty much departed (not died, just drifted away) and for the past little bit I've been pretty down about it ("all is darkened in the vale of tears").  I've questioned if "It Gets Better" is really true (as has another friend, read his awesome blog post here) for those of us single, not-so-young-anymore, never-were-really-much-of-a-twink-anyway guys.  This hymn says that sorrow and pain are only temporary, and God is there for us to take it away. I'm glad I have Him on my side :)