What should we pray – and sing – when the world around us seems to be falling apart? That certainly seems to be the case as I write this hymn study. Not only are we continuing to struggle with the challenge of the COVID virus. We have experienced incredible unrest, hostility, and disunity in the political environment of this nation, and now there is great uncertainty about the effect a new presidential administration will have on our religious freedom. We continue to experience sad decline in the faithfulness of the church as more and more sacrifice biblical fidelity on the altar of social acceptance to pursue a “woke” Christianity, substituting social justice as a replacement for the true gospel. And we continue to deal with the possibility of renewed threats to those who hold to the sanctity of marriage and the sanctity of life. Add to that the way we were all shaken by video of angry rioters breaking into the US capitol building!
“Where is God in all of this?” we wonder. Ungodliness and hostility toward believers is growing stronger and becoming more and more threatening. Are we entering the last days when Satan is to be loosed on the earth (Revelation 20:7-8)? If so, shouldn’t we be able to stand fast, confident that the Lord is in control even when we can’t see His hand? The phrase from Maltbie Babcock’s hymn, This Is My Father’s World, comes to mind. “And though the wrong seem oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet.”
But a more complete theological reaction – and comfort – is found in Margaret Clarkson’s wonderful hymn, O Father, You Are Sovereign. She was a prolific writer and left us with a marvelous treasury of more than 100 hymns. All of her hymns reflect a solid God-centered world-and-life view, filled with joy. They will surely be found in almost every hymnal published during our lifetime, and beyond. The granite-like foundation of the Christian’s faith was a very real factor in her writing, in part because of the way she clung to the Lord and His promises through many difficult dimensions of her life, both physical and emotional.
In 1946, at the request of Stacey Woods (first president of an Inter Varsity chapter on a US university campus – University of Michigan, 1941) she wrote, We Come, O Christ, to You as the theme song for what would later become Inter Varsity’s triennial Urbana Missions Conference. Her 1935 hymn, So Send I You (widely regarded later as the finest missions hymn of the 20th century) also became popular through Inter Varsity when it was first published in 1954, especially after she re-wrote the words in a more much balanced version in 1963. Instead of So send I you to labor unrewarded, she changed it to So send I you, by grace made strong to triumph. When you sing it, make sure you use the “corrected” version!
Edith Margaret Clarkson (1915 – 2008) was born in Saskatchewan, Canada into what she herself described as a “loveless and unhappy marriage,” which broke up when she was only 12 years old. After the family moved to Toronto, where she grew up in St. John’s Presbyterian Church, she was raised to know and love the Lord and was a robust defender of the Reformed faith as her own. As a child she treasured her Presbyterian hymnal, and responded to the gospel at the age of ten during a series of meeting based on Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Second only to her Bible, she learned and loved the Westminster Shorter Catechism. From the top of her cherry tree she sang the hymns she had learned by heart in church, many from Watts, Newton and Havergal being among her favorites. She always preferred what she apparently called “real hymns” to gospel songs or their later counterparts.
She chose a career as an elementary school teacher, teaching children for 31 years, even as she wrote for Scripture Press. In addition to her hymns, she wrote 17 books, including Grace Grows Best in Winter (1972). Her faith was toughened by a lifelong struggle with physical disabilities, that involved much surgery and considerable pain, much of it from childhood as she was frequently bedridden with juvenile arthritis. Much later in life, she wrote Destined for Glory: The Meaning of Suffering (1983) in which she recounted her long struggle with physical ailments: “I can’t remember a time in which I was not tormented by excruciating headaches coupled with compulsive vomiting, lasting for days at a time. … Though I have besought God earnestly for healing, He has not seen fit to touch my body with a miracle. His working in me has been more intimate—He has touched my spirit and is working His miracle there.”
She retired from teaching in 1973, although she later taught courses in hymnody at Regent College in Vancouver. She spent her final years in a Toronto nursing home, where those days were clouded by dementia. Countless believers share her heartfelt prayer from her 1987 hymn, In Resurrection Bodies: “Lead on in sovereign mercy through all life’s troubles ways, till resurrection bodies bring resurrection praise.” She awoke in glory on March 17, 2008, to see her Lord face to face.
A Wheaton College Archive staff member summarized her life and work this way. “Throughout her life Margaret Clarkson seemingly experienced every form of suffering one could experience; a broken home, financial strains, loneliness and isolation, and constant physical pain. However, through it all, she continued to place her faith and trust in her Savior. During a life of trials she sensed God’s grace and mercy and communicated that to others by providing the church with dozens of hymns testifying to His sovereignty, love, and power. Margaret Clarkson heard and increasingly understood God’s call upon her life. As she matured she recognized that she was sent out to minister to others, not in isolation, but in triumph.”
This 1982 hymn, O Father, You Are Sovereign, stands out as a masterpiece of doctrinal and devotional expression. It belongs in every hymnal in the topical section of the sovereignty of God. Each stanza directs attention to a different sphere in which God’s sovereignty is at work, and where His sovereign will is being accomplished for the benefit of His covenant people as well as for His own eternal glory.
In stanza 1, the focus is on God’s sovereignty in the creation of the universe. Genesis 1 and Psalm 33 tell us that God made all things by the Word of His power. In other words, He spoke everything into existence, from the tiniest microscopic-sized life forms to the vast galaxies with their billions of stars, from the changing seasons to the varied contours of land and sea.
O Father, You are sovereign in all the worlds You made;
Your mighty Word was spoken and light of life obeyed.
Your voice commands the seasons and bounds the ocean’s shore,
sets stars within their courses and stills the tempest’s roar.
In stanza 2, the focus is on God’s sovereignty in the decisions of mankind, whether of individuals in homes and neighborhoods to the courts and palaces of governmental power. We feel small, insignificant, and powerless at the mercy of princes and tyrants, but they are only instruments in God’s hands. Whatever happens in our lives, or even in our deaths, we can rest secure as His trusting children secure in His embrace.
O Father, You are sovereign in all affairs of man;
no powers of death or darkness can thwart Your perfect plan.
All chance and change transcending, supreme in time and space,
You hold Your trusting children secure in Your embrace.
In stanza 3, the focus is on God’s sovereignty in our lives as the effects of sin bring us pain and misery, whether from the sorrows of disease or suffering under the powers of evil. Despite all that, God is the Conqueror and is pursuing and will accomplish His perfect will, and that means our “souls’ eternal good,” as He prepares us for heaven.
O Father, You are sovereign, the Lord of human pain,
transmuting early sorrows to gold of heav’nly gain.
All evil over ruling, as none but Conq’ror could,
Your love pursues its purpose – our souls’ eternal good.
In stanza 4, the focus is on God’s sovereignty as it will be revealed for all to see on the day when Jesus is acknowledged as King of kings as every knee bows before Him and every tongue confesses His lordship (Philippians 2: 4-11). That is only a dim promise for us now, but we live in confidence that that day is set on God’s timetable. What a glorious hope that gives us as we walk by faith, not by sight, trusting and worshipping Him.
O Father, You are sovereign! We see You dimly now,
but soon before You triumph earth’s every knee shall bow.
With this glad hope before us our faith springs up a-new:
our sovereign Lord and Savior, we trust and worship You.
Words © 1982 Hope Publishing Company, 380 S Main Pl, Carol Stream, IL 60188
We sing this to the tune ST THEODULPH, a tune we usually associated with the Palm Sunday hymn, All Glory, Laud, and Honor. It was written by Melchior Teschner, a Lutheran pastor in the early 17th century. Bach knew the tune and composed a chorale prelude for organ using the melody. The tune name comes from Theodulph of Orleans who wrote the original version of the Palm Sunday hymn about the year 820.
Here you can hear the hymn being sung, along with the lyrics.