My Life Flows On in Endless Song (Evangelical Lutheran Worship 763)
1 My life flows on in endless song;
above earth’s lamentation,
I catch the sweet, though far-off hymn
that hails a new creation.
Refrain
No storm can shake my inmost calm
while to that Rock I’m clinging.
Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,
how can I keep from singing?
2 Through all the tumult and the strife,
I hear that music ringing.
It finds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing? (Refrain)
3 What though my joys and comforts die?
The Lord my Savior liveth.
What though the darkness gather round?
Songs in the night he giveth. (Refrain)
4 The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
a fountain ever springing!
All things are mine since I am his!
How can I keep from singing? (Refrain)
Text: Robert Lowry; Music: Robert Lowry; Public Domain
Devotion
To sing, especially in the face of adversity, is to live in hope—irrepressible hope.
This hymn was composed in the politically turbulent late 1860’s. President Lincoln had been assassinated and President Johnson was one Senate vote from being removed from office. The 14th Amendment was ratified, but the Ku Klux Klan waged a campaign of terror against newly freed Black voters. The slogan of one political party was, “This is a White Man’s Government,” targeting the racial anxieties of white voters.
Through it all the church kept singing, “No storm can shake my inmost calm…since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?”
Storms rage yet today, without and within—too numerous and too obvious to list here. And our hearts, our communities, are not unscathed. Yet people of faith continue to stand and sing in hope and a greater vision, “What though the darkness gather round? Songs in the night he giveth.
Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?”
Prayer
So fill us with the vision of your grace and love, O God, that our voices in the face of life’s storms may rise together in irrepressible hope. May the peace of Christ keep us singing. Amen.