Hymn of the Week: April 24, 2023
Hymn of Promise
Text and Music Nathalie Sleeth
In the bulb there is a flower;
in the seed, an apple tree;
in cocoons, a hidden promise:
butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter
there’s a spring that waits to be,
unrevealed until its season,
something God alone can see.
There’s a song in ev’ry silence,
seeking word and melody.
There’s a dawn in ev’ry darkness,
bringing hope to you and me.
From the past will come the future;
what it holds, a mystery,
unrevealed until its season,
something God alone can see.
In our end is our beginning;
in our time, infinity;
in our doubt there is believing;
in our life, eternity.
In our death, a resurrection;
at the last, a victory,
unrevealed until its season,
something God alone can see.
Todays Devotion
has been reprinted with permission of the author, James C. Howell, from his book entitled: Unrevealed Until Its Season: a Lenten Journey with Hymns. Published by Upper Room Books 2021. The book can be found here: The Upper Room
Something God Alone Can See
The origin of hymns and life stories of composers usually aren’t things I obsess over, maybe in the same way I enjoy watching ballplayers or listening to music without needing to know so much about a quarterback’s love life or a guitarist’s partying. But sometimes circumstances within which a hymn was birthed can help us overhear a deeper resonance and some untapped emotion.
Nathalie Sleeth
began publishing anthems in the late 1960s and wound-up conceiving more than two hundred anthems for choirs. “In the Bulb, There Is a Flower,” a choral piece we know as “Hymn of Promise,” sprang from a season in the mid-1980s when she was “pondering ideas of life, spring, winter, Good Friday and Easter,” and also T.S. Eliot’s intriguing poetic line, “In my beginning is my end,” which she cleverly reversed to “In our end is our beginning.” The words and music she wrote were simple, eloquent and beautiful.
And then, just a few days after putting the finishing touches on it, her husband, Ronald (a professor of preaching), was diagnosed with terminal malignancy. When he heard her play the anthem for him, he asked that it be sung as a hymn at his funeral. So, it was. He was only sixty-three. She lived seven more years, dying at age sixty-one. I’ve sung it now at enough funerals of people I’ve loved that I get a little choked up and teary any time I hear it.
Superficially, the hymn is about natural beauty. But what did Sleeth select from the world of nature? Just as the apostle Paul tried to explain the resurrection of the body by pointing to the way a seed falls to the ground, Sleeth draws our attention to a flower bulb, an apple seed, and a cocoon. If an alien arrived from another planet and picked up a bulb or cocoon, it would probably toss it aside as if of no use. If someone said it will become a fragrant flower or a beautiful butterfly, the alien would scoff. The bulb, the seed, and the cocoon persuade us that, yes, we do know something of a surprise, of anticipated new life.
So, she leads us then to recall that a cold winter eventually yields to the warmth of spring. Silence can be deafening for the one who grieves. Can the hollow silence become holy stillness? Can a song transform an empty space into a holy place? The dawn does dawn after all. That apple seed really is transformed, if you wait long enough, into a tall, sturdy tree-producing fruit for us to eat.
When Sleeth died at age sixty-one, she ceased being productive. But her work is still bearing much fruit. Isn’t this the goal for all of us? We only produce for a brief time. But our love, our words, and our being can still be fruitful even long after we are gone.
When we bury our dead, even if we purchase a pretty casket or a velvety box for the columbarium, the body isn’t much to behold, with no life in it. God’s surprise, God’s gift, is entirely hidden from us – and yet it is surely there. It’s “something God alone can see.” God, even in the hour of death, can already see our redeemed, eternal life of joy, light, and love. And so, ours is to hope.
A Song in Every Silence
The hymn captures how grief works. When we have no words, when we shrink back in the quiet, “there’s a song in every silence.” I continue to be impressed by brave families who stand in our sanctuary and defy death by raising their voices in hymns. Their loved one is now all memory, but “from the past will come the future, what it holds, a mystery.” We do not know what will happen next; we aren’t entirely sure about the shape of a reunion or a gathering to come. It’s “something God alone can see.”
The Eliot line makes us dizzy with paradox – and that is how hope works. It’s not logical, it’s not in our control, and it’s certainly nothing automatic or even natural. “In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity; in our life, eternity; in our death, a resurrection” – and this victory is “something God alone can see.” It’s unrevealed until its season.” In the meantime, in this season, ours is to grieve, sing, and hope.
