Something for a death bed? - Midweek Message 19th May 2021

 

 

Dear Friends,

For some time now I have been reading a hymn a day from The Revised Church Hymnary which was the hymn book which was in common use in the Church of Scotland when I was growing up, though it has been replaced (not I think for the better) by CH3 and then CH4. As I have done so I have found hymns that if I had ever known them or sung them had long since been forgotten.  However, I have found myself moved by some of the words. That happened recently when reading a series of 7 hymns (RCH 97-103) each of them inspired by one of the seven sayings of Jesus on the cross.

The last of them (103) was written on what are usually regarded as Jesus final words, his final prayer: Father into your hands I commit my spirit (Luke 23.46)  As I read it, I thought to myself I would like someone to read me these words on my own death bed. I don’t know if you ever think about that. It can sound morbid, and we tend to avoid the subject of death, not least our own death.¹ Yet we all know that nothing in life is surer but that we shall one day die. It is worth asking and thinking about: ‘What would I like someone to say to me or to read to me as I face death?’

A couple of weeks ago in the Midweek Message I wrote something about Sir James Young Simpson the Scotsman who popularised the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic in medical surgery. While reading about Simpson I came across some entries in a diary kept by his nephew, Robert Simpson who visited his uncle on a regular basis during the last two months or so of his life when he was confined to his bed at his home in Queen Street Edinburgh.²  There were many references to various portions of Scripture that his nephew read to him and also to hymns, for example, Horatius Bonar’s   I heard the voice of Jesus say and also Toplady’s Rock of Ages. There were some lines from Anne Cousin’s The sands of time are sinking:

I stand upon his merit,
I know no other stand,
Not e’en where glory dwelleth
In Immanuel’s land.’

At one point Simpson said to his nephew: “There is a hymn often on my mind at present which just expresses my thoughts:

‘Just as I am without one plea
But that thy blood was shed for me’”

“I so much like that hymn,” he said.

Along with the readings from Scripture, these hymns were evidently a great comfort and encouragement to Simpson.

Here then also is the hymn by Eliza Alderson which brought all this to my mind. In the first two stanzas she reflects on Jesus words, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit, in relation to his death and then in the final two, she turns the reflection into a prayer for herself in relation to the day of her own death whenever that should come:

And now, belovèd Lord, Thy soul resigning,
Into Thy Father’s arms with conscious will,
Calmly, with reverend grace, Thy head inclining,
The throbbing brow and labouring breast grow still.

Freely Thy life Thou yieldest, meekly bending
E’en to the last beneath our sorrows’ load,
Yet strong in death, in perfect peace commending,
Thy Spirit to Thy Father and Thy God.

My Saviour, in mine hour of mortal anguish,
When earth grows dim, and round me falls the night,
O breathe Thy peace, as flesh and spirit languish,
At that dread eventide let there be light.

To Thy dear cross turn Thou my eyes in dying;
Lay but my fainting head upon Thy breast;
Those outstretched arms receive my latest sighing;
And then, oh! then, Thine everlasting rest.

Yours in Him

David

 

¹ I recently read a helpful review of a book ’Learning the lost art of dying’ whose very title indicates the problems we have in our contemporary world with dealing with death.

² You can find a record of some of these diary entries here