Sabbath Devotional :: Turning to the Hymns for Peace

*Christ and Children from around the World (Christ with Children)*, by Del Parson

I spent the last few years as a primary teacher. In addition to interacting with the sweet and adorable sunbeams, the calling meant that I spent a lot of my Sunday worship singing at church. While the children’s songs were often in so high a register that I could only squeak out a few of the notes, the messages of the songs and the enthusiastic singing of beautiful truths by my little primary friends provided profound and enduring lessons in the truths of the gospel.

I felt so grateful that these little brothers and sisters were learning the pure truths of the gospel – that we are children of Heavenly Parents who know and love us, and who have a plan for our happiness – in these songs. I found that the words of the songs and the voices of the children were infectiously playing on a mental soundtrack for me throughout the week. Once I was tempted to match the contentious tone of an email I received, returning a jab with a jab. As I pulled up the email program and placed my hands on the keyboard, the sweet voices of the children and our primary chorister flooded into my mind, singing: “If the Savior stood beside me, would I say the things I say? Would my words be true and kind if He were never far away?” I remembered the primary chorister giving special emphasis in teaching the children the words, “true and kind” in the song.

That emphasis pressed itself into my memory and came to the fore when I needed that counsel to choose to give a kind answer to the email.

The music and hymns of the gospel are lessons we carry with us, enabling the Spirit to call them to our remembrance when we need those truths. Similarly, I find the Spirit is especially able to testify to me, and I am able to feel that influence, as I sing and pay attention to the words of the hymns.

In particular, I love the beautiful words of the hymn written by Emma Lou Thayne: “Where Can I turn for Peace?” (Hymn 129).

Where can I turn for peace?
Where is my solace
When other sources cease to make me whole?
When with a wounded heart, anger, or malice
I draw myself apart,
Searching my soul?
Where, when my aching grows,
Where, when I languish,
Where, in my need to know, where can I run?
Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?
Who, who can understand?
He, only One
He answers privately,
Reaches my reaching
In my Gethsemane, Savior and Friend.
Gentle the peace he finds for my beseeching.
Constant he is and kind,
Love without end.

The Spirit has testified to me each time I sing this hymn that Emma Lou Thayne’s words are true. The Savior is a constant and kind friend. In this world, we surely each go through sorrow and tribulation, but there is a source of perfect solace in the Lord, who has overcome the world. The verbs in the beautiful words of the hymn are especially interesting to me: turn, run, and reach. These active verbs teach that we should not hesitate to seek the Lord’s counsel and comfort, but should hasten, with urgency rather than reticence, to seek the healing and understanding that the Lord can uniquely provide.

How often do we find ourselves with wounded hearts, beset with anger or malice? Truly, it is the quiet hand of the Lord that will “reach our reaching” and “calm our anguish” with perfect, gentle, constant love. Ironically, it is in those moments of anguish that we are sometimes tempted to isolate ourselves from those we love most, including the Lord. This hymn counsels us to turn, to run, and to reach for the Lord’s hand in those moments. And He will find and provide the peace that is most appropriate — tailored to our beseeching.

I often find answers to my prayers, even my unspoken questions and heartfelt requests, in the sweet combination of music and lyrics in the hymns. I have often felt the Spirit’s most personal witness of the truth of the Lord’s perfect love while singing the hymns. I find it moving that the Savior and His disciples sang a hymn as part of the spiritual preparation for the Savior to undertake the great atoning sacrifice.

The hymns are such a fountain of peace. We should drink daily from their soothing waters, rather than confining them to Sunday services. As we seek for daily peace, not only as relief from anguish, but as an important gift of having the Spirit to always be with us, I hope we will include the sacred songs that so effectively invite the Spirit into our lives in our daily study and meditation.